To Whom it May Concern
by Catch23North
Summary: Sabretooth has a plan, but so does Wolverine. Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be'. Again, pay attention to the rating.
1. Hurricane Party

Title: To Whom it May Concern

Chapter 1: Hurricane Party  
Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth  
Rating: NC-17/M  
Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.

Notes: Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be?'.

Summary: Sabretooth has a plan, but so does Wolverine.

Warning: This story is five chapters long, but it's NOT finished. The plot bunnies involved went on strike back in 2006.

* * *

Chapter 1: Hurricane Party

-

A new wind whipped across the beach, carrying the dead-alive scent of the swamp in the woods behind the house. The last patch of blue had left the sky hours ago, and it may as well have been sundown. Hurricane Francis, they were calling it.

Sabretooth hammered a few more nails into the edge of the plywood over the back door, and called it good.

Creed had a hurricane party to get to. He'd already packed the 'party favors' in the car, and if he left soon, he should just make Pensacola by the time the storm hit. Better leave the top up though, because the rain would be here in minutes. Creed liked convertibles, and he always had a few stashed away somewhere. The latest addition to his stable, and the one he'd brought to Florida with him, was a fire-alarm 'Vette, the kind of car that would only have looked natural driving off a Hollywood sound stage. He didn't hunt in this car. This was his toy.

Reaching into the closet for his jacket, Creed felt gloved fingers close around his wrist, and a sharp tug. He attacked, but he hadn't counted on his assailant being wedged up near the ceiling ninja-style, so his claws gouged the back wall of the closet instead.

A sharp-edged wire tightened around Creed's throat in the instant it took the ninja to jump over his head to the floor, and Creed fell backwards. The wire cut as he fell, but it wasn't through any arteries yet. The ninja stood over him momentarily, but when Creed snapped his hand up towards the ninja's ankle, the wire tightened warningly, and a foot came down on the center of his chest, hard. He could press the attack, but in the time it took to recover from having his throat cut open to the spinal cord, the ninja would just put another loop around his neck. Creed subsided, and gave his enemy a calculating appraisal.

The ninja's scent was masked by a full-body suit, a sort of tar-baby-meets-latex look. It smelled like rubber, pool chlorine, and adhesive from the waterproof sealing tape that covered the diagonal zipper. His silhouette though, was unmistakably Logan's. Navy 'dry suits' like that were worn over a thin coat of baby oil or Vaseline, and not much else, Creed recalled. Something about a truly watertight seal...

Well aware that he'd been recognized, Logan peeled the black hood off like a second skin, one-handed. His scent came to Creed almost tangibly, a hit of warm clean sweat and ice cold adrenaline, oil, a tang of sea water, and musk. Logan's dark hair was wet, slicked back from being under the mask, and his eyes glittered. The rest of his face showed nothing.

* * *

There weren't many people who could tie Sabretooth to a bed and have any hope of him staying there, but Logan was one of them. He knew two important things. First, it wasn't the strength of the restraints involved, but the amount of damage the restraints could do. Razor wire worked fine. Second, use Creed's bed. Like most of the rest of the furniture in the house, it was a custom job, and the beautifully finished wooden beams were probably cored with something stronger.

Sabretooth tried to bite the wrist of the hand holding the end of the razor wire noose, but wound up on the claws of Logan's other hand instead.

"Ah! GodDAMMIT! Some X-Man YOU are..." Creed snarled, waiting for the side of his chin to heal. Logan ignored his words, and led Creed to the edge of the bed carefully. If Creed moved with him, and didn't pull on the razor wire loop, it wouldn't cut him. Otherwise...

The wire was on the surface by now, resting against the skin of Creed's neck like a ruby choker.

Logan watched Creed intently.

"Yeah, yeah, weasel watch the munchie, can't have me gettin' loose now, can ya?" Creed sneered, lying down, "-'cause you KNOW what I'd do... Y'think ya made this gig up all by yourself?" Wolverine looped the razor wire around the top of the headboard, and knotted it there with his free hand. His gloves, Creed noted, were made of heavier stuff than the dry suit. "I'd cut holes in that little body-rubber o' yours, wherever I wanted a handful. Leave the rest of it on. All slippery-like..." /Now-/ Creed thought, /-when he leans over to fix my hands-/ Creed kneed Logan in the back, and grabbed a fistful of his hair, trying to crack Logan's forehead against the headboard as hard as possible. -That was the plan anyway, but a well-placed nerve punch to the back of Creed's elbow derailed it.

Logan hit him low on the stomach, a stiff-handed Eastern strike probably developed to break bones. The only thing it did to Creed besides piss him off, was cause him to arch forward far enough to choke. Creed glared at Logan, teeth bared. "Well that was fuckin' fair...(cough)"

Logan smirked, and tied Creed's hands down. Once the razor wire was in place, he added a second loop, this one made of rock-climbing rope. Creed's claws could cut that, and they'd have to, to get the razor wire tight against his wrists. Creed was insulted by the presence of the second rope, but since he had no real idea what Logan had planned, he decided not to mention it. Maybe he could bite through the loop around his neck or something. Logan tied down Creed's legs as well, though he only used the rope for this.

Outside, the wind rose. The power flickered, then died entirely, and the only light in the room came in around the slats of the nailed-down window shutters.

Logan cut Creed's loose dress shirt off with his claws as if it was paper, then stroked his right set of claws down Creed's chest several times, thoughtfully.

Decided, he bent down for a moment and licked the exact center of Creed's chest, leaving a small wet swirl in the blonde hairs there. It stood out ticklish and cool against Creed's skin, like an artist's signature in oil paint.

"Ya missed," Creed observed, cheekily. Logan tore the rest of Creed's clothes apart, long strips of tan fabric ripping loose under his hands and hanging off his claws momentarily before finding the floor. "That's right, that's good..." Creed purred, "-now how about that frog-suit yer wearin'?..."

No reply. The shiny black surface did feel good against his skin when Logan knelt on the bed between his legs, though. Kinda reminded him of the stuff Mystique's white costume was made of, though-

Creed paused.

No, this was Logan. While Mystique probably still possessed the skills to tie him down and call him Rover, she would have gone about it differently, and she wasn't fast enough for that black-ops move Logan had pulled on him in the closet.

/Beware the closet/ Creed thought, wincing at his own joke.

"While you're down there..." Creed began. A small, black-handled tactical knife appeared in Logan's hand as if conjured there. "-ahh... You know that thing's awful sharp, right?"

The blade flickered in Logan's hands, scattering a few brief red lines across the skin of Creed's leg, just above the knee. They didn't even have time to bleed. Another flurry of the crisscrossing, shallow cuts, this time midway up on the front of Creed's thigh. Another set, this time on his stomach. The pins-and-needles tingle of healing left his skin warm to the touch, heat like a sunburn blush spreading out from wherever Logan cut him.

There was an art to this. Too deep, or too slow, and it would have really hurt. But this razor-edged flicking business...

Logan knew it, of course.

A small red tongue started following the path of the knife, licking broken skin as it sealed.

Sabretooth closed his eyes, and hissed softly.

His skin was on fire, and he... couldn't... move. Cold drops from the tips of Logan's hair fell from time to time. He had to be sweating like a pig in that suit. It was created for oceans like the North Atlantic, after all... Under that black sealed cover, Creed could imagine what Logan's skin felt like... slippery... hard... warm... short, dark hairs slicked against his body like those of something that had just been born. If Logan moved just right in that thing, he could probably come from the touch of the tight, oiled rubber alone...

Unlike Creed, who was painfully hard, and suddenly very jealous.

The house creaked around them, and gusts of wind rattled the windows. Even the scant light from between the shutters was fading, leaving the bedroom in a half-twilight that would have been pitch to anyone else. Logan abandoned Creed for the floor abruptly. To his vision, the brightest things in the room were the scraps of pale fabric on the floor, the reflection in the long mirror by the closet, Creed's pale skin and blonde hair, and most especially his eyes. Everything else was dim, but visible in fading shades of black and gray.

"Hey..." Creed called over to him unhappily, "-we're not d-"

The sharp sound of tape tearing off from the zipper of Logan's dry suit silenced him. The zipper itself followed, and Logan peeled himself out of the suit like a shake shedding it's skin. He wore nothing under it. As he stepped out of the dry suit pooled on the floor, Logan's manner changed. His shoulders seemed to have come forward, and his fingers curled in more towards his palms. Logan crouched suddenly, and threw the tac knife backhand into the hard wood of one of the bedposts. The professional soldier was gone.

"That works," Creed swallowed, appreciatively.

* * *

Logan came back to the bed, brushed both of Creed's wrists with the tips of his fingers, and then inspected the wire at his neck. He licked around the wire carefully, and then kissed Creed hard, sharing the wet-iron taste with him. Lying full length on top of him, Logan felt every bit as amazing and slippery as Creed though he would, but he wouldn't stay still. He kept squirming around. Pressing against him. Making those little impatient growling noises.

"Oh c'mon," /PLEASE.../ Creed didn't quite whimper.

Logan's hands were everywhere he couldn't reach, slick, strong fingers kneading and stroking him. He was moving down, always down, and he wasn't moving fast enough. And then finally, finally Logan was between his legs again, soft breaths across his cock not quite enough, and too much all at once. Creed felt Logan's hands tighten under his thighs abruptly, pushing his head back against the headboard and tilting his hips up sharply, all the way to the limits of the rope around his ankles. He was...

Logan pressed forward against him, not inside but full length vertical, letting Creed FEEL him and shiver first. He did this.

Creed was losing it, and fast. He couldn't remember when he'd started making noise, but the string of whimpers and half-formed words had to be coming from somewhere. Logan bucked against him slowly, firm, drawn-out strokes that were more punishment than any man deserved. Creed was aware that he was talking, but he wasn't hearing himself. The blood in his head was louder.

Logan relented at last, pushing inside where few men had gone and lived, watching Creed's eyes squeeze shut as he arched his head back to the limits of the razor wire, and screamed. Logan let him get used to the feel of him, shifting enough to divide Creed's attention between the shock of being taken like this, and the deep, hot tension. The heavy climbing ropes at Creed's wrists creaked against the power of his arms.

His words trailed to an end after a while, and he lay silent, harsh breaths alone telling. Logan took him then, because he wanted to, and Creed was his to take.

Unashamed and not terribly coherent this night, Creed let loose what he felt to the wail of the hurricane wind outside, and Logan added to this sometimes, but mostly he listened.

A scream like this was an uncommon thing.

And Creed, if he could be so inspired, -loved- to scream...

They built to a crux, as much one of sound as feeling, and broke, first one, than the other.

The wind outside seemed to drop, but really it was because the sound was suddenly alone.

Logan let go of him slowly, easing Creed back down onto the bed, leaning forward to nuzzle his side with a kind of proprietary affection.

Creed was shivering and he couldn't stop. He couldn't have, but he had, and he did, and he'd done it before, and oh, GOD...

Logan brushed the side of Creed's face with his fingers, and then licked the cooling sweat from them carefully. Creed's eyes closed, webs of hair around his face stuck to him wetly, skin cooling slowly like the hood of a car. Logan crept up, and kissed him, rubbing his thumb along the back of Creed's left ear. Creed kissed him back, and again, and began purring against Logan's mouth. Rain scoured the roof overhead, and there was a faint draft from under the door, as if one of the windows had broken.

"Wanna go again?" Logan whispered.

* * *

Wolverine stepped down off the bed into six inches of standing water where the hardwood floor used to be. Opening the door to the hallway, it was more of the same all the way into the living room. Sand had drifted in, forming low islands, and a steep bank against the couch. The water had reached nearly a foot higher sometime during the night, judging from the water line on the walls. A long strip of seaweed had wrapped itself around a leg of the coffee table, and a hermit crab was lurking on the spine of a waterlogged copy of 'King Rat' in the corner. The kitchen was worse, with a waist high sandbank leading up to the broken window over the sink, and a leafy mangrove branch wedged against up the against the oven. Something green and scaly scuttled behind the fridge. It was still raining outside, but the wind had dropped by half, and the surf wasn't up to the level of the house anymore.

Climbing over the sandbank, Logan found four fat white emergency candles in a drawer, and six unopened beer bottles in an overhead cupboard. It figured. With a box of chem-lights in the garage, Sabretooth kept candles in the house. As an afterthought, a box of crackers and a few soup cans were added to the pile. With an amused backwards glance at the scaly tail poking out from behind the refrigerator, Logan took his supplies back to the bedroom.

"How bad is it?" Creed asked. He was sitting up against the headboard, with what had been the top sheet wrapped around him from the waist down.

"Back window's broken," Logan shrugged, putting everything down on the bed. He lit two of the candles, dug a blue and green flannel out of Creed's closet, and then climbed back up on the bed. The flannel was long on him, and Logan rolled the sleeves to his elbows. He felt eyes, and looked up. "Somethin' on your mind?"

"Nah," Creed lied, glancing down to pick up a beer bottle. He pushed the cap off with his thumb. /Nothin'. Only that I like seein' you in my shirt, and I think I'd do anything for you right now. It's a strange thought, but I know it'll pass. -Gettin' fucked like there's no tomorrow turns my brain ta yogurt for a while. Always has./

Still... like a drug, he'd enjoy it while it lasted.

* * *

They ate in companionable silence, until the crackers became a game of crunchy sounds without rules, and Logan ended up with crumbs up his nose from snickering too hard.

"Sn-nnf-"

"Heh."

"There has-" -cough- "-got ta be somethin' better t'do here..." Logan managed.

They exchanged a quick glance.

/You?/

/No./

/Good, me neither./

Creed thought for a moment, then reached into the top drawer of his bedside table and came up with a pack of playing cards, which he tossed to Logan.

"This deck's missin' a six o' spades, right?"

"Yeah."

Logan dealt. His hand stayed bad even after taking new cards, and Creed won with a pair.

Logan had a pair of threes next hand, but Creed beat him with a straight.

Next they both had two, but Creed's was kings.

"Not your day, is it?" Creed smirked.

He lost the next hand to Logan's three of a kind.

"We'll see."

Logan lost.

"Know what I think?" said Creed.

"What?"

"I think we need a wager, here."

Logan flattened him with the highest straight possible.

"Keep talkin'," Logan purred.

"Truth or dare."

"Are ya serious?"

"Whaddya think I'm gonna pick?" Creed pointed out.

"I'm not sure I can think of that many dares," grinned Logan, "but I'll play until I run out."

-

Logan dealt, and beat Creed with a diamond flush.

"Truth," said Creed.

"...Um... Who really owns this house?"

"US Gov, but they built it just for me."

"Huh."

-

Creed won with a pair of kings.

"Dare," Logan decided.

"Kiss me."

"That's not much of a dare," Logan observed.

"Name another X-Man who'd do it," Creed pointed out.

"You really get off on that X-Man thing, don't ya..."

"Yeah, I do."

Logan kissed him.

-

Creed won again, with jacks.

"Truth," said Logan.

"Do you get off on me bein' a bad guy?" Creed asked.

"...No."

"Ouch."

"You asked," Logan shrugged, unapologetically.

-

Logan won the next hand.

"Truth," Creed said, again.

"Have you ever owned a Lotus seven?"

"Oh, yeah. Bought one o' those when they first came out."

Logan wanted to ask if it had been a green one, but he already knew the answer. He'd been driving that car the day the Weapon X project had kidnapped him. It made sense, after all. Logan had gotten a taste for motorcycles during world war two, while Creed preferred to drive cop-bait sports cars. Creed didn't seem to have made the connection. Maybe it was just as well.

-

Confirming the theory that somebody upstairs had a sense of humor, Creed won the next hand with a pair of sevens.

"Truth," said Logan, against his better judgment.

"What is it with you an' that damn book?"

"Walden?"

"Yeah. That crap," Creed spat.

"It calms my head."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Well, there's a lot of good points in it, but basically it's just about a little patch o' woods outside a town, an' an innocent guy who likes ta hear 'imself talk."

"So... you like 'Walden' 'cause it's BORING?" Creed said, incredulous.

"Most people read to get away and be somebody else for awhile. So do I."

"I'll be damned," Creed muttered. /Logan fantasizes about being boring?/

-

Logan beat Creed's tens with a pair of jacks.

"Dare," Creed decided.

"You know how to put your hair in a bun?"

"Yes..."

"Do it."

Creed did it. He didn't look that bad, actually. Sort of a Mexican gangster look.

-

Logan beat him again, in exactly the same way, except with different jacks.

"What's with this goddamn deck?" Creed grumbled, "-truth."

"What was your first impression o' Kyle?"

"Small, pink, and loud."

"You remember... that?"

"Bits and pieces," Creed shrugged, "-you were the one who found 'im, not me."

"What did-"

"Deal, Logan," Creed cut him off.

-

Creed won the hand with a pair of aces.

"Truth," said Logan.

"D'you really think I'm a nutjob, or not?"

"You work at it pretty hard," Logan allowed, "-truth is, you're just not Human. Bein' a psycho's a means to an end."

"Ya think?" Creed smiled wickedly, showing his fangs.

"Ooo, scary," Logan deadpanned, "-an' yeah, I do."

"Interesting."

-

Creed had most of a hearts flush, but the ace of spades shut him down. Logan won with a pair of twos.

"A beautiful hand shot ta hell..." Creed complained, "-this is definitely your fault. Dare."

"Sing for me."

"What kind o' song?" Creed was delighted with the request.

"...Quiet."

Creed gave him Simon and Garfunkel. He was actually very good.

-

Creed's three of a kind beat Logan's two pair.

"Dare."

"Kiss me," Creed said, again. Logan started to get up, but Creed held up a hand, "-not now. Later."

"When?" Logan asked, suspiciously.

"When I tell you to," Creed leered.

"That's takin' it out o' game bub, an' you know that," Logan objected.

"You backin' out on me, partner?"

"You know what's gonna happen when this gets out?"

"Haven't told yer friends we're knockin' boots, have ya?" Creed deduced.

"I told a few," Logan objected, "-and as for the rest, it's none o' their damn business!"

"Nobody cares, Logan. We're Canadian, for god's sake."

"Why is this so important to ya?" Logan asked.

"I don't take kindly ta bein' ERASED," Creed snarled, "-if I have to go lookin' for you again, I don't want the X-Men an' everyone on their flamin' CHRISTMAS LIST tryin' to shut me down."

"-That's- what this is about," Logan said, almost to himself.

"So?" Creed prompted.

"What?"

"You takin' the dare, or not?"

"...Yes. You better be damn careful with this, though. And no more takin' it out-o-game."

"Heh."

-

The next hand was Logan's, with the aces of hearts and spades.

"Ever notice how those cards look about the same, except for the handle on the spade?"

"Yes," Logan shuffled both cards back into the pack.

"Truth."

"You started this game just ta get that kiss, didn't you?"

"Yeah..."

-

Creed beat two pair with three jacks.

"Truth," said Logan.

"Scared you off, eh?" Creed smirked.

"Is that your question?"

"Fine. What did YOU think o' Kyle?"

"You've asked me that before," Logan stated. /...After I blew him up with a land mine, and before he-/

"I know," said Creed, derailing Logan's train of thought.

"Kyle... didn't look much like you, to begin with. He was like one of those tiger cubs people try an' keep for pets, then have to sell to a zoo when they get older an' start killin'," Logan paused, then continued. "He'd -PLAY- an'... he ripped a girl's face open, Creed. Stitch. Shy little redheaded thing. Clawed 'er up right there in the middle of the practice room. I wanted ta kill im'. I -knew- he was playing, an' I STILL wanted ta kill 'im. He didn't understand that he had ta be gentle with the flight, like a Human kid with a kitten."

"Human kids -kill- kittens," Creed stated.

"Yeah. Sometimes they do, don't they."

-

Nothing matched for either of them on the next hand, but Creed held an ace.

"Dare," said Logan.

"Go catch that thing I hear in the kitchen, an' bring 'im here to me."

The owner of the tail Logan had noticed earlier turned out to be a two-foot alligator. Creed held it at arms length, amused by the reptile's attempts to escape and/or bite him, then dropped it. The alligator landed in the water beside the bed with a short splash, and hauled ass for the living room as fast as possible. Logan closed the door after it.

-

Creed won with two pairs.

Logan was getting tired of this streak.

"Truth."

"What's the strangest thing you've ever had sex with?" Creed asked.

"You. No contest."

"...Nice save."

"Thanks."

-

Logan won with three aces.

"Truth," Creed grinned.

"You WISH. -Who's the Foreigner?"

"What do you know about 'im?" Creed asked, suddenly serious.

"Huh-uh. It's my turn," Logan stood firm.

"Dare," said Creed, after a moment.

"That answers my question."

-

Logan won with a pair of queens.

"Truth," Creed decided, warily.

"We seem to be out o' beer. I assume you have more?"

"Laundry room, over by the freezer, Creed told him.

"Right."

Logan left.

-

Creed had nothing, and Logan won with three fives.

"Dare," said Creed.

"Can your phone get through this storm?" Logan asked.

Creed grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand, and checked.

"I can try."

"Call somebody."

Creed looked at the cards he'd just lost with, then dialed.

"Sebastian Shaw," The phone picked up.

"Hey. It's Victor."

"Ah, Mr. Creed. What can I do for you at this hour?" Shaw asked, glacially polite.

"Uh- -why, what time is it?"

"Seven forty-five in the morning," Shaw answered, irritated but slightly amused. "What's the occasion?"

"I lost a hand o' poker."

Silence.

"Who were you playing against?" Shaw asked finally, his gambler's curiosity kicking in.

"Wolverine."

"You're gambling with Wolverine at seven forty-five AM, you don't know what time it is, and you're losing?"

"Yeah."

"That sounds like a good game. I'll let you get back to it."

"See ya, Shaw."

They hung up.

-

Logan won again, with two pairs.

"Truth," Creed chose.

"If you had the chance ta kill off all the Humans, would you do it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They're no competition."

-

Creed won the next hand with three tens.

"Truth," said Logan.

"Have you ever been sick before?"

"Yes."

-

Logan won with two jacks.

"Truth," Creed told him.

"Tell me about a fantasy you have."

"Uh-" /no, not that one.../ "-okay. We're in hell-" Logan made a small choked noise at this point, but didn't actually laugh. "-An' we work for the devil."

"Go on," said Logan.

"Hell's a city in the middle of a desert, like Las Vegas," Sabretooth explained, "-now as ya might imagine, two men of our unique talents got no trouble findin' work in this town. Not everybody works for the devil. It's like ordinary folks an' cops in a regular city. Come to think of it, there's a lot of cops on the 'force' down there, too," Creed smirked. "The reward for doin' what we do is free will, an' that time seems ta move forward. Most o' the pissants down here are stuck in a 'they're gonna get me' paranoia, or just obsessing over what they did. They get a little more clear-headed when they're near one of us enforcers, though. I wear red, you wear black. You're what they call a tracker. Funny as it sounds, you're still as good a guy as they got down there. You hunt down the worst hell has ta offer, an' use the guilt obsession thing against 'em. You make 'em -sorry-, and then you make 'em cry, and then you make 'em CRAZY. Sometimes you don't even bother makin' 'em bleed.

Me, I'm a nemesis. I kill whenever I feel like it, an' I keep the general adrenaline level at a nice steady red-line. Nobody actually stays dead when they're killed in hell, but it's not crowded. The Indians were right. You only exist in the afterlife as long as somebody still alive remembers somethin' about you. Hitler's gonna be there for at least a couple thou'."

"How did we die?" Logan interrupted.

"Doesn't matter," Creed shook his head, "-the best part's at the end, when the sun rises to block out half the sky, so close you can see the surface boil, an' we go back to our place."

"And then?" Logan asked.

"All kinds o' kinky shit," Creed grinned, "stuff like last night, and then some."

"You tryin' to tell me somethin', here?"

"Yeah. Go to hell."

Logan looked down at the cards face-up on the blanket in front of him. The jack of hearts, and the jack of spades.

Funny. He'd always pictured himself as an ace.

-

"Hah!" Creed put down a clubs flush. Logan only had a pair of sevens.

"Dare," said Logan.

Creed handed him the phone.

"Call Westchester."

Logan looked at him hard for a moment, then tucked his current beer into his shirt pocket, and dialed.

"Hello?" Archangel picked up on the third ring.

"How's things, Warren?"

"Not bad. You should have called a week ago. Here's Scott. I'll let him tell you-"

The phone changed hands. Warren still didn't like him, Logan noted. Warren had left the X-Men years ago in protest to Xavier recruiting Wolverine, and while they had learned to work together as teammates later, they'd never had much common ground out-of-costume. And then there was the Psylocke thing...

"Hey, Scott."

"Logan! What time is it over there in Japan?"

"Actually I'm back in the states," Logan told him.

"You are? I wish I'd known that," said Scott.

"What happened?"

"Arcade happened. He crashed a state beauty pageant in California, and took the 'winners' to Disneyland. It wasn't pretty."

"How did you do?"

"Nobody died, but it was all over the news. Disney's still figuring out whether to sue the little fink, or hire him," Scott said, disgustedly.

"Figures," Logan snorted.

"Which reminds me... if you're going to stay on the team's active roster, I need a better way to reach you," Scott explained, briskly.

"Eh?" 'IF'?! Was Cyclops threatening to -retire- him?

"Come on, Logan. It's hard enough for me to explain why you're on a U.N. team and the X-Men at the same time without you being impossible to reach."

A few feet away, Creed was listening to the conversation, and quietly dying of laughter.

"Since WHEN?" Logan demanded, swatting Creed.

"You're not on two teams?" Scott asked, carefully.

"I've been gone fer MONTHS before an' nobody batted an eye. Let's call this what it is, Cyke! This is about you seein' 'Sabretooth' pop up on yer caller ID," Logan snarled.

"I'm not asking to TAG your EAR, Logan. Just buy a- -just buy a phone, okay?"

"You almost said, 'buy a fucking phone', didn't you?"

"..."

"There's hope for you yet, Slim."

"So can I count on you?" Scott asked.

"If I have to carry an X-phone, I want there to be an 'X' on it," Logan decided. "I'll pick one up in the next couple o' weeks. Fair enough?"

"That'll work," Scott agreed.

"So aside from that?"

"Nightcrawler's putting together a list of regular colleges that accept known Mutants. The professor thinks it's a great idea for the older students."

"I thought the Xavier school had a college degree program..." said Logan.

"It does. But not for all the subjects the parents ask about, and not everybody wants to send their kid out of state for school." Scott pointed out.

"Huh."

"What about you?"

"Well..." Logan looked around at the water on the floor, the candles, the scraps of bloody razor wire twisted around the bedposts, the cards, beer bottles, empty soup cans, and cracker crumbs in the center of the bed, and at Sabretooth trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face. "-I'm good," Logan said, honestly.

* * *

Creed could feel Logan's heartbeat right through his skin. It was against his chest, and it tickled the palm of his hand. Wrapped around Logan from the back, he knelt in the middle of the bed. Afternoon had turned the chinks in the window-shutters to light gray, and outside a heavy Southern rain was still falling. Creed hadn't thought about moving, he was just -there-, with his arms around Logan's chest. He'd half expected Logan to deck him for the unexpected move, but instead a thumbnail had drawn lightly across the back of his hand. A reminder. Logan would not be controlled.

This great heart, alive under his hand. Creed wanted to put his claws in under Logan's ribcage and feel it pulse directly against his fingers, but somehow he knew Logan wouldn't appreciate that. /I've done it to myself/ Creed thought, /-I'd do it better, for him. Do it so it wouldn't hurt so much. Let his skin heal around my wrist, with my hand inside. Feel his heartbeat change as I jerked 'im off.../

He would ask someday, but he knew better than to ask now.

Creed licked the juncture of Logan's neck and shoulder, and trailed his teeth across the skin. It was good holding him like this.

Logan stayed where he was, head forwards and eyes closed. There was no predicting him today. The rules had changed, just maybe. /Let's see.../ Creed dropped a kiss on the nape of his neck, causing a very satisfying catch in Logan's breathing. That was some Japanese thing, but Creed didn't remember the details. A hand closing around Logan's upper arm was met with a quick tensing of muscles. That hadn't gone over so well. Creed moved his hand up to Logan's shoulder as if he'd planned it that way, and continued testing the waters. It was a frustrating process. Both of them wanted a piece of action right about now, but there were things in the way... old things.

Neither one folded.

Logan found his place on Creed's lap, and Creed discovered that if he kept his hands in fists and didn't squeeze too hard, Logan would allow himself to be held there. It wasn't quite right, but it worked. There was a livewire tension each time Logan moved within the circle of those arms, pressing forwards against them, daring them to close. His hands came up to Creed's wrists, skin sweat-slick beneath his fingers. Another contact point. A fulcrum. A touch.

Logan came with the rain in his ears, and Creed's shout muffled against his shoulder in a bite. Panting in the quiet, Creed leaned his forehead against the back of Logan's hair, and cleaned the blood off his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"..."

"Gimmie a taste."

Creed turned Logan's face towards his, and kissed him sideways.

"Mmm. Yer the best," Creed purred.

"Why da we do that?" Logan mused, touching the scar on his neck as it faded.

"Wolverines. Weasel family. 'Nuff said."

"...Shut up."

* * *

The rain quit around four AM, and a chorus of frogs started, one by one. Wolverine woke up in the dark, and listened.

It would be time to leave soon, but... He sat up against the headboard, knees drawn in, and thought about the cigar box in Creed's desk. Then he thought about Amiko, and about what Yukio had said to him at the Tokyo train station.

She'd captured him once, back when the trust of Mariko Yashida lay in shards at his feet, and the dreams he'd had were broken like his nose. They'd cut a swath from Ginza to Shinjuku together, and gone through a whole lot of Sake in the process. Yukio was one hell of a woman. Danced with bullet trains, and death, and him. Also played fast and loose with her loyalties in those early days, which was too bad. He couldn't kid himself that was why it hadn't lasted, though...

It hadn't lasted because she hadn't expected him to change. Yukio had taken Logan at face value, had gone too far, given too much before demanding anything real in return.

"Be what you are, why fight it?"

Yukio had said.

"A chance to learn to put your powers to their greatest use."

Xavier.

"Strike! While the Human part of me is still in control. Finish me with your claws, I beg you... I don't want to-"

Jean.

"Do you remember this blade, Logan? The honor sword of Clan Yashida-"

Mariko.

"Was you lookin' fer me? 'Cuz ah been lookin' fer you..."

A serial killer.

"A man should be true to his nature."

Creed.

Not 'you', not 'your', not 'Logan'. Not 'a Mutant' or 'a Human'. A MAN.

Logan considered Creed, asleep in the sheets beside him. They'd really done a number on this bed. Creed did not look younger, nor more innocent in sleep. He didn't look tortured, and he didn't look smug. His face looked the way a gun looks when it's lying loaded on a table. Just there. And ready.

He could reach down and fit the deceptively soft corner of Creed's ear into his hand. Run his thumb across the cartilage like a smooth metal barrel, maybe sight something.

But then, guns don't wake up and make you think, do they.

Logan sighed.

He though about Kyle. After he'd gotten used to the idea, Logan had found that he liked having a son. Wildchild was traveling in Canada at the moment, which basically meant the thankless job of explaining Team X to Alpha Flight. Logan thought there was more to it than that, but Kyle hadn't offered details, and Logan hadn't asked. Kyle was an adult. Sort of.

Kyle's true age was a strange continuum of clashing Human and Mutant standards, events that had aged him before his time, and others that had lapsed him back. Literally he was twenty-six, but he looked eighteen, and had the tendency to act like a fifteen-year-old, or on really bad days, like a dog. Sabretooth seemed to understand that last one a lot better than he did, so Logan let Creed handle the 'pup'. Kyle wanted different things from him. A teacher, a councilor. Someone who knew how to fight nightmares.

A leader.

Kyle had followed him into battle more than once, taking the violent instincts that had almost earned him death as a teenager, into combat. Logan remembered Kyle during the seventy-two hour siege on Rumika beach. He'd waited for the word, then cut and pasted everything in his path, stopping equally suddenly when he heard the order to disengage.

Kyle was one hell of a soldier, but it was his ability to make decisions for himself that Logan worried about.

Re-forming Team X as a mercenary unit under SHIELD had been the right thing to do at the time. It showed Logan where Creed stood, and it had given Kyle some much-needed experience in non-super-powered deadly combat. It would take more than the stun-gun team Weapon X had sent after Logan all those years ago, to take Kyle down now.

But as for the rest of it...

Did Nick Fury really control SHIELD, or just run it? Whose agenda were they preventing on these missions? In whose favor was Team X tipping the balance?

Logan hated these questions. He'd fought for others his whole life, or drifted from one personally selected cause to the next. He didn't like being one of the chess masters.

Nick, now there was a chess master. The Colonel was one of the best men Logan had ever known, and he played for keeps. He played for life, and for humanity in whatever form it might wear. But Fury had his orders, and his unique global perspective often made him do things Logan wasn't counting on. Things like keeping Kyle's identity secret even from his father, or ordering them into battle against other Mutants.

It was a problem.

* * *

Creed woke to the scent of cigar smoke. The noise of rain on the roof had stopped, and the edges of the shutters glowed softly golden. The storm was over. Creed wondered if the shower would have hot water this morning or not, and that made him think of who might share the shower with him, and that brought him to Logan. Wolverine was sitting up against the headboard, smoking thoughtfully. The edges of his dark hair looked frayed and spiky. His face was smooth, but his eyes were tired.

The scents of the last day or two hung in the room with all the clarity of words spray-painted onto the walls.

Logan was here. Card game yesterday. Beware of alligator. Do not disturb.

Creed yawned, and curled up again with Logan's lap as a pillow.

No need to rush off just yet.

Then something warm and dusty fell on the side of Creed's face. /He DIDN'T.../

Creed glared murderously, and wiped the ash off with the heel of his hand.. THAT was a hell of a way to wake up in the morning...

"What are you doin' for the next two weeks?" Logan asked, looking just a tad smug.

"I've got a man ta kill," Creed replied, pleasantly.

"Think ya can fit a trip ta New York around that?"

"Yeah, maybe," Creed grinned.

"So who is 'e? This guy you're supposed to whack...?"

"No 'supposed to' about it," said Creed, firmly, "-this asshole's gotta GO. It's a funny story, actually."

"Oh really?"

"Well ya see, he tried ta use his very best pal fer a &#!! ASHTRAY..."

Logan dove off the bed just in time.

The fight was a good one, and it ended nearly an hour later, all the way down on the beach. Creed had sand in his teeth. He hated that. He also could have done without losing. He had drawn first blood, he had done the most damage, and then those goddamn claws... It just wasn't fair.

Ahh, well. It was definitely time to call a contractor. ...Or break out the explosives, one of the two.

-


	2. Old Territory

Title: To Whom it May Concern

Chapter 2: Old Territory  
Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth  
Rating: PG-13  
Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.  
Notes: Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be?'.

Summary: Road trip.

* * *

Chapter 2: Old Territory

The Punisher:

/I told him not to come back. I warned him. And I watched for him.

His people have missed it, but they don't see him now. His friends think he's a god, and they'll forgive him anything. I know better. Some people change, and some people stay bad, and some people... well, calling them people at all is giving them a lot of credit.

Wolverine is a man most of the time. When he wants to be. When everybody's watching. And then when it's quiet, he's other things. Killing things. Heartless things that turn your civilized words into poison as you speak them, and hide the evil of the streets under shades of gray. But Wolverine's sins are nothing to those of the one who walks beside him. For the safety of New York, and for the justice of the dead, Sabretooth must DIE.

...I'm going to need a better gun./

* * *

Spider Man:

/HOLY CATS! Well, there's something you don't see every day. Doesn't look like a hostage situation, though... knowing how well Wolvie can hear, I don't dare get close unless I'm ready to fight, but what in the world is going on?! Thwip. Thwip. Okay, let's see...

Sabretooth? Those are common in New York. Wolverine? They're less commonly found, but I hear they're native to Westchester, and that's just upstate. But...aren't those two supposed to be natural enemies? Neither one is in costume, and if I hadn't known what Wolvie looked like without his mask... Hmm... Thwip.

They argue about something, then disappear down into a subway. I'm left wondering.

What did I just see? Something the X-Men don't know about?

-Sigh-

I don't know why I let anything that hairy little weirdo does surprise me. The last time we crossed paths, Wolverine had me guarding a dead body, and babysitting the Wendigo.

...Maybe Sabretooth's a Wendigo?/

* * *

Daredevil:

/The Hideki case is going well. If I can just get-

I know that voice. I blend into the dead air between two buildings, and listen. Yankee backwoods accent with a West Canadian base, and lung capacity like a Bengal tiger. Sabretooth.

He hasn't come through here in a while. I would LOVE to nail this guy. He's a government assassin, one of the untouchables who vanish out of the judicial system within six months of each arrest. I hate this man and everything he stands for.

I also know better than to take him on now. Even should I win, it wouldn't stop him.

No.

If I go hunting a man like Sabretooth, I have to be prepared to kill him. He's also a Mutant, which complicates things. I don't hate mutants, but they're not my first choice for opponents. Sabretooth is supposed to be very hard to kill. He has enhanced senses, similar to mine plus keen eyesight and a nose like a bloodhound. Pretty damn strong too, and a lot of people have shot him over the years without lasting effect. Maybe it's a vest, but I don't think so. He is a Mutant, after all.

Those enhanced senses might be a weakness. Some mace in the face is effective against dogs. Why not him? I bet the Avengers never thought to try it.

Wait...

I know that voice too. The Canadian accent's stronger, and Wolverine has a more normal lung capacity, but there's that same growling edge. Wolverine's with the X-Men. I heard they were trying to sort Sabretooth out a year or so back, but he escaped. I remember when the APB went out over the police radios. Wolverine doesn't sound alarmed. Maybe the X-Men got further with Sabretooth than they admitted, and let him go after he was cured just to keep him from having to stand trial.

I wouldn't put it past them./

* * *

"So. New York. The big apple," Sabretooth spread his hands for effect. "...Are you gonna tell me why we're here?"

"Nope," said Logan.

"Huh. SHIELD's based in New York. Am I gettin' warmer?"

"Nope."

"It's Broadway. You wanna go see 'Cats'."

"Nope," Logan smirked.

"You're gonna stick a needle in my neck, an' I'm gonna wake up someplace awful."

"Nope," Logan's smile faded.

"You want to see if you can survive jumping from the-"

"Nope."

"Hellfire Club?"

"Close."

"Dante's Hole?"

"You gotta be kiddin'."

"..." Creed mentally retraced their steps, and thought about all the bars they -hadn't- gone to. One of HIS favorite spots was near here... "Come with me," he said, taking Logan's wrist and walking off purposefully.

"You got a plan?" Logan asked, mostly ignoring this.

"I gotta destination. An' I just figured out you DON'T."

"Just because it's further than you wanna walk-" Logan began.

"Wherever it is, it's a bar, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I know a bar three blocks East of here, an' I want to see how you mix the place."

"New?" Logan asked, dubiously.

"Far from it."

"A good bar is a hard thing ta lose, bub."

"I'll take my chances," Creed smiled.

"Fair enough. Lead on."

"'Satan's Circus'?" Logan read off the painted sign beside the door. "You didn't make that up yourself, did ya?"

"Heh. Hardly."

The doorman was bald, stood on Creed's eye level, and had maybe forty pounds on him. Creed remembered personally throwing this guy out of a window, but that was five years ago, and there were no hard feelings.

"Hey, Creed."

"Benny," Creed nodded to him.

"It's been awhile. You playing tonight?" Benny asked.

"Maybe. Who's at the table?"

"No one who'd make it worth your while."

"Huh," Creed looked from Benny to Logan. "I'll let you two boys get acquainted," he said, walking through the door.

Benny appraised Wolverine skeptically, thumbs hooked under his belt. He'd seen that face before. He didn't know where, but he'd seen it.

"You got a name, shorty?"

Logan tipped his cowboy hat back, and looked at the doorman like he was deciding where to put the bullets.

"Logan."

"Well you know this here's a high-class joint. It's got RULES. You fight, you won't like what happens. Think you can handle that?"

"Sure."

"Got anything else to say?"

"Nope."

Benny had a bad feeling about this one. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was off. Logan cracked his neck, waiting.

"Alright. Have fun," Benny let him in. Now where had he seen that face...?

"What took you?" Creed grinned, on the other side of the door.

"Professional courtesy."

"Oh yeah, you own a bar in Madripoor, don't you..."

* * *

Logan walked into the main hall of the Satan's Circus just ahead of Creed. It was a long smoky room with a bar along one wall, heavy carved-wood pool tables, a scarred wooden floor, and several side-rooms leading off the main one. A three foot high red demonic mask hung on the wall behind the bar, just above the level of the mirror. 'Where deals were made and hearts were broken' indeed. More like teeth, if you got too close to a stray poker chip. Wolverine recognized half a dozen faces before his eyes had time to adjust. His right hand curled into a fist, and stopped at just the right angle not to interfere with his claws coming out. Creed caught this, and closed his hand around Logan's shoulder, hard.

"At ease, partner."

They looked at each other for a tense moment. Then Logan unclenched his fingers. Creed let him go.

"I don't belong here, an' you know it," Logan growled, under his breath.

"'Course you do. Yer a mercenary, remember?" Creed reasoned.

"We'll see," Logan took his hat off casually.

It was like a sewer rat popping out of the coffin during a funeral. Chairs scraped back quickly, and exclamations of fear and alarm rose above the hubbub. Several folks scrambled out the back door. Sabretooth folded his arms and watched, grinning. Logan looked around the room, in no hurry. It got very quiet. The sound of somebody screwing a hooker in the men's room became faintly audible. Benny ran in, swore, and then stopped cold like everybody else.

Logan looked up at Creed, then back at the frozen bar.

"Boo."

There were a few yelps, but most people held their composure. The bartender gave Benny a cold, 'I'll deal with you later' glance.

"What'll it be?" He asked Wolverine, unfazed.

"Bottle o' whiskey, an' a shot glass," Logan replied.

"Anything else?"

"I'll start with a beer, m'self," Sabretooth cut in.

"Right," The barman fixed the drinks, and gave them to a waiter with very orange hair and a pair of mirrored, wrap-around sunglasses. He didn't smell remotely human. Kind of like a bird, actually, and when he came over with the tray, his hair turned out to be made of thousands of tiny feathers. He stopped in front of Logan.

"What, don't we get a table?" Logan demanded.

"Would you mind changing first? You're scaring my customers," the bartender told him.

"Well, really. You people have no sense o' humor," Logan grumbled, closing his eyes. He opened the outer eyelids a second later, but not the inner ones. To everyone watching, it looked like he'd just made his eyes change color from brown to white-without-pupils.

"Whaddya think?" he asked, turning to Creed with a smile.

Sabretooth stared at him.

"I think that's the most disturbin' thing I've ever seen you do," he decided finally.

* * *

Feather-head showed them to a table near the back of the bar, and gave them their drinks. Creed snarled at him for no particular reason. The waiter departed quickly.

"Have you lost your damn mind?" Creed hissed, as soon as they were alone.

"What? Why?"

"I'm not WITH Mystique. Haven't been for years," Creed explained, "-anybody who actually KNOWS 'er is on the phone by now."

"I'm countin' on it," said Logan, calmly.

"What are you playin' at?"

"Twenty questions. Has it ever occurred to ya that she knows more about our false memories than she should, fer someone who wasn't part o' the Weapon X project?"

"You're sayin'..." Creed began.

"Like maybe she WAS," Logan nodded.

Creed was silent for a moment. Mystique had once confused him during a fight on a subway train by turning into his mother, or at least what he'd thought was his mother. She'd said he'd 'poured his heart out' to her back in Berlin when they first met, but how would a story translate into an exact copy? ...The woman in the memory had been wearing clothes from the nineteen thirties, for god's sake.

That COULDN'T be for real. No way. He'd been an adult by then.

Logan was right, and it got even worse, because for BOTH of them to have missed this for so long, Mystique had to know some kind of a command code. Some gesture or verbal command that stopped them from questioning her. It could be anything. Even a tilt of the head or her name.

Heh. 'Mystique'. ...How ELSE would you control a couple o' guys?

"Fair enough. What now?" Creed asked.

Logan poured a shot, and drank it.

"How should I know? I'm playin' this by ear."

Creed looked up at him sharply. Then they both snickered.

"PLEASE tell me yer jokin'..."

"Nope. Wanna shot?" Logan held the glass out to him. Creed took it, downed it, and set the shot glass back on the table with a loud 'clack'.

Logan poured another shot, for himself this time.

"Guess we find out together, eh?"

"This isn't much of a window," Logan muttered, after Creed told him his subliminal command theory.

"You mean you think she'll go right for us?" Creed asked, angry at the thought that they might be beaten by just a WORD.

"No, I mean that just by sayin' her name, we may already have blown it," Logan explained. "You remember and I remember for NOW, but what about tomorrow mornin'?"

"How far do you reset, from Mystique?" Creed asked, roughly.

Logan swirled the scotch around in his shot glass, and wouldn't look him in the eye.

It was too far, and both of them knew it. "Okay, I'm fresh out o' telepaths," said Creed. "-You know anybody who'd take this job?"

"A couple years ago, I'd have said Psylocke." ...It went without saying that she wouldn't help now. The few people who survived attacks from Sabretooth's claws ALWAYS tended to carry a grudge.

"Somethin' wrong with Charlie an' Jean?" Creed purred, elbows on the table.

"Yeah. You'd give Jeannie ideas."

"And...?" Creed prompted.

"Xavier doesn't like you," Logan explained, as if addressing the mentally challenged.

"Heh. So much fer the 'bald man's burden'!"

"That reminds me," Wolverine's voice dropped, "-if you EVER kill one o' my friends-"

"Have I yet?" Creed pointed out. "Psylocke LIVED."

"Silver Fox."

"One, the bitch broke yer heart, an' two, that was Psi-Borg ALL the way," Creed declared, angrily.

"You -would- have."

"I -didn't-."

"Oh, you poor homicidal sock-puppet..." Logan sneered.

"ONE vic you knew. While bein' worked over by a telepath."

"Seraph!" Wolverine countered.

"That was fifty years ago!" Creed protested.

"So were a lot o' things," Logan reminded him, coldly.

"Now listen 'ere-" Sabretooth grabbed his arm hard, "-just 'cause YOU forgot-"

"I would never-"

CRACK!!

"Feel better?" asked a deep, smooth bass. Wolverine put a hand to his forehead, still dazed. Creed felt the bones of his nose begin to knit back together. They both looked up to see who'd just signed his own death warrant by smashing their skulls together, and saw-

"Blob?" Sabretooth blurted out.

"Heh heh heh..."

"How the hell are ya? I didn't know you worked here," began Creed. He'd worked with the Blob in the past, and while the big guy wasn't swift, on his feet or otherwise, he didn't weasel out on his bets.

"Not bad, an' no, you didn't," Blob's smile was both wider than normal, and small next to the rest of his face. He blocked out half the bar behind him. "-Cuz you know the rules about fightin'."

"Where were you earlier?" Creed asked, "-they almost threw us out fer nothin'."

"Just got in. An' ah -heard- about earlier," the Blob assured him.

"How'd you know I wasn't Mystique?" Logan asked, testily. If he HAD been, the Blob's move probably would have fractured her skull, if not actually killed her. By the same logic, the Blob couldn't be Mystique himself.

The Blob pointed a finger at Logan's forearm. Creed's claws had drawn blood when he grabbed him earlier, but the skin was now unmarked.

"Y'all got your reasons. Ah could care less. Don't make me come over here again."

With that, Blob turned around, a process that reminded Logan of a semi backing up, and meandered over towards the pool tables.

* * *

The table was silent for a while. Creed finished his beer, and got another one.

Logan took the whiskey down a notch, and watched the Blob pool-shark the hell out of a thug with the Dixie flag printed on the back of his jacket.

A pixyish redhead with half her face painted white showed up. She waved to Creed merrily, and he waved back. A very intense-looking Irishman and a tall thin guy were working the dart board in the corner. Irish was winning.

"We were talkin' about Mystique just now, weren't we?" Logan said, finally.

"Could be," Creed frowned.

"I don't remember the last half hour. Do you?"

"Uh... You were talking about Paris. You know, that time on the Eiffel tower?" Creed reminded him.

"With her?"

"Yeah."

"She shows up in some interesting places, doesn't she."

"Yeah. I'm beginnin' to wonder why," Creed growled.

"Whaddya mean?" Logan asked.

The same conversation from earlier was played through again, except this time Mystique's possible involvement in the Weapon X program was Creed's idea, and Logan figured out the subliminal code-word problem. He thought the code-word was Mystique's famous, 'have I upset you?' line.

"We got to create a trail," Logan decided thoughtfully, "-somethin' we can follow, an' she can't. Somethin' she don't know about. Somethin' old that don't get wiped out."

Creed drummed his claws on the tabletop for a moment, then scratched the wood, leaving parallel grooves.

"Your turn," he smiled.

Logan stared at the scratches, and blinked.

-

/Dappled sunlight through the leaves. A heron. Grass under his workman's boots, and a scent of green. He could smell water nearby. A whip-poor-will called.

"Your turn," Creed smiled, holding a hand out towards the tree he'd just marked with his claws. He looked the same, and he looked the way Logan remembered dead people. Stopped in time, sort of. Simple linen shirt with an open collar. Wide-open face with a smile that trusted him. Blonde sweep of hair loose, disappearing behind Creed's shoulders. Claws every bit as sharp as they were now. Beautifully muscled, but not hardened by training. Brown pants. A leather belt, and size twelve brogans.

Logan HAD this memory, and every detail seemed significant.

Shlikt. Slash. He saw his claws leave a mark on the tree's bark as well, at a close right-angle to Creed's. An 'X'. Maybe even the first of it's kind to mean Mutants. But where-/

-

"DAMN!" Logan lost hold of the memory, and thudded his fist down on the tabletop.

"What was -that-?" Creed demanded.

Someplace he never forgot. Whip-poor-wills. Water nearby. A place he hadn't been since--

"Get yer coat," Logan stood, taking the whiskey bottle with him, and put his hat on one-handed, "-we're goin' ta Massachusetts."

"The academy?"

"No. I'll tell you on the way," Logan paused, flicked out his claws, and added his part of the mark to the scratches on the table.

Creed opened his mouth to snarl something, then stopped suddenly, and a slow smile broke out over his face. His eyes were harder now, but his smile was the same.

"You are one sneaky li'l shit."

"I hope so. Jus' don't forget, an' don't fall asleep," Logan cautioned, as they neared the door.

"If ya weren't pretendin' to be Mystique, I'd kiss you," Creed told him, relishing the look of total confusion on Benny's face.

"C'mon..." Logan laughed, dragging him past the shell-shocked doorman by an elbow.

* * *

Walden pond was near Concord, just outside Boston. They drove all night, since there was no telling who would forget what when. The dark green SUV was Creed's, summoned from wherever he always seemed to come up with vehicles. Logan held the theory that Creed had originally developed this trick to avoid being offered a ride on the back of his motorcycle. Nobody talked much on the way. Both had been under fire for years, though they'd seldom known the reasons why. Things had changed, were beginning to change. The awareness was tenuous, though, and both of them knew it. Creed bought a spiral notebook at a gas station in Stockbridge, and wrote a few things down while Logan drove.

In the midst of some of the most beautiful countryside in the world they were besieged, only now they KNEW it. And paper could burn.

Bright morning in these woods felt familiar, but was a little painful on the eyes.

"Figured you'd drag me out here one o' these days," Creed grumbled, locking the doors.

"It's around here someplace..." Logan looked up at the tall pine trees near the parking lot. Nothing looked right yet.

"That tree you keep talkin' about?"

"Yeah."

"Ever think how the Weapon X goons have done the tree trick before?" Creed reminded him, doubtfully.

"You mean with me an' Silver Fox? That was real, it was just carved in a tree 'stead of a door," Logan explained.

"Trees grow. How come you could still -read- it?" Sabretooth asked. "They probably stole the idea right out o' your head."

"Let's just see what the tree looks like, huh?" Wolverine said, getting annoyed.

They looked around until noon. Walden pond was small, only about a mile long, but there were a LOT of trees. It had to be an old one, and that simplified things a little. None of the trees on the kind of hill that Logan remembered had anything carved on them. He couldn't find it.

In a last attempt, Logan asked the oldest park ranger he could find if there was any record of a tree with an 'X' and bunch of other things cut into the bark.

"Let's see, here... There was one about twenty years back." The ranger looked through some yellow-edged maps, and then called the sheriff. Then he called someone else.

Creed wandered down to the edge of the pond, took his shoes off, and waded in. He seemed to be stalking something in the mud. Nobody felt brave enough to question him.

* * *

Logan's search ended up on a grassy hill. A retired sheriff and the old park ranger were with him. Creed was nowhere to be found, and Logan didn't look for him. In some ways, he would rather come back with Creed later than have the ranger and the sheriff watching.

"So where is it?" Wolverine looked around the hilltop doubtfully. "None o' these trees are old enough."

"You're looking for a stump, I'm afraid," the ranger explained. "The tree itself was hauled off years ago."

"What?"

"This is a historical park. If the kids carve a tree up too bad, it has to be taken out," the ranger explained.

"So. You... cut down my tree," Logan said, numbly.

"Your tree?" the ex-sheriff asked, suspiciously.

"Yeah. my tree. I know you don't see it that way, but dammit, I liked that tree!"

The ex-sheriff and the ranger exchanged glances. Since Walden pond was practically ground zero as far as the environmental movement was concerned, they were used to dealing with people who felt strongly about trees. Still, this was a little weird.

Twenty years ago, for cryin' out loud?

Logan searched around in the grass until he found it, and the ranger and the ex-sheriff watched him uneasily. The wide stump was old, saw-cut rather than axe-chopped, with grass growing up through the cracks. It stood maybe two feet from the ground. This, Logan knew without a doubt, was it.

He stood over the stump silently for several minutes.

"I'm sorry about this tree," the ranger told him, seriously, "-marking trees in a public park is illegal. You were just a kid when you carved it up, though. Uh... I guess me and Bart will be heading back. Are you going to be okay here?"

Logan nodded once.

They passed Creed on his way up the hill. He was barefoot, and he had a crawfish in each hand.

The ranger glared at him, and opened his mouth to tell Creed to put them back in the water. Sabretooth grinned at him mockingly, and the ranger caught sight of Creed's pure white eyes. The ranger decided that since crawfish weren't actually an endangered species, he should probably let this one go.

* * *

Creed took one look at Logan standing over the tree stump like it was a tombstone, and broke out laughing. He couldn't help it.

"A little shorter'n you remembered?"

"Sure. Laugh it up, bub. Not like it was important or anythin'," Logan spat.

"'Course it was. Hungry?" Sabretooth offered Wolverine a live crawfish.

"It was right HERE!" Logan snarled, "I remember! Our claw mark was the oldest, and then I came and carved more later, to KEEP it. How could THAT be turned inta #&!! FIREWOOD?! Those sons-ah-bitches cut down my &#!! memory TREE!!" Logan yelled.

Creed put an arm around Logan, and bit off the crawfish's head noisily with his free hand.

Logan turned and glared at him. This was SACRILEGE.

"What? You didn't want it."

"Gimmie that," Logan growled.

"No."

Logan grabbed Creed's wrist with both hands, and yanked the crawfish away with his teeth.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

"Eating out of my hand now?" Creed purred.

"I was aimin' for your fingers," Logan shrugged, "-you really don't get this, do you? What that tree had on it, I can't get BACK."

"What was on it?" Creed asked.

"If I knew-!"

"No, I mean... why d'ya want it so bad?" Creed asked, "-it coulda been yer flamin' grocery list for all you know. Or stuff you've found out other ways since."

"I don't think so."

"Hell, you could have the wrong tree. You're not the only graffiti artist in these parts, ya know?" Creed argued.

"No. No, this is it, Logan said, firmly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Then what are you worried about? YOU REMEMBER."

"Do you?" Logan asked.

Creed looked down at the stump.

"'Course I remember."

"Right."

Logan didn't believe him.

* * *

"They cut down my #&! tree..." Logan muttered. He'd been drinking steadily for two about hours now, in a rough sawdust-on-the-floor biker joint up in Concord.

"Hey! Two more down on the end!" Creed called over to the bartender. She was cute, that unusual shade of midnight brown that had nearly vanished except in the deep South, and allowed her to disappear into shadow if her eyes closed. Her lipstick was purple, and she smelled like vanilla. Sally had been working this bar for three years. She knew trouble, and these two were it. They'd been well-behaved so far though, and they drank like it was soda pop. She drew two more mugs, and set them on the bar. The blonde linebacker hadn't let her get them a pitcher. She suspected he liked watching her turn around and walk back to the center of the bar afterwards. Him and everybody else. Humph.

"You've got a one-track mind tonight, ya know that?" Sabretooth said, conversationally.

Logan growled at him.

"Of course that does mean -I- get to talk fer a change," Creed continued. "You really thought this was it, didn' you? Just find the magic bush, and remember everythin'? What makes ya think you could HANDLE a head-full like that?"

Logan kept drinking, and ignored him.

"Hell, I bet you're even havin' second thoughts about Mystique. You're thinkin', is she the only one with the command words? Do I really wanna kill her without findin' out? Who else can play Iron Chef with my memories? Is Psi-Borg dead? -I can tell you that last one. He ain't."

Logan was listening now, though he was pretending not to.

"Yeah, he probably just went back and got his island repaired. Bit of a bone, ain't it?" Creed laughed, "-s'what we get fer takin' on a telepath with a wetworks crew. I'm gonna have ta thank Wraith real good for that one..." Creed's eyes flicked white, "-but seriously. I don't think ya can kill Mystique in cold blood. HOT blood, maybe, but not just sneak up an' whack the bitch. You've forgotten what yer capable of, Logan, an' it's a damn shame."

There was a sharp glint in Logan's eyes when he glared this time.

"Yeah..." Creed nodded, "-feels good, doesn't it?"

Logan's deadly stare didn't waver.

"This is why I ain't worried. You always come 'round in the end. I have faith in you."

Logan's eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, that would be simple, woudn' it? Have a claw-fest in this place that makes tha evenin' news, an' show up back at the X-mansion without a word. You COULD play it like that. But you'd know. An' I'd know. An' you just got a taste o' not havin' to pretend." Creed finished his beer, and signaled for another. "-An' that's the trick, see? You ain't exactly like I am, but yer NOTHIN' like those pansy-ass-"

Logan pressed his fist quietly against Creed's side, under the edge of the bar, and popped his middle claw. Creed made a momentary choked sound.

"No," Logan hissed, "-I'm not like them. But I don't have ta hear that from YOU."

"Got some nerve, did I?" Creed winced.

"I have had it up ta here with you trashin' the X-Men," Logan growled, "-their dirt may stink ta high heaven, but I never found Beast playin' Dr. Frankenstein on another Mutant in the basement, neither. I took out MAGNETO with these 'pansy-asses'. Have you ever beaten Magneto? No? Then SHADDUP."

Logan retracted his claw, and licked the blood off of his knuckles.

Creed swallowed, hard.

* * *

Sabretooth threw his bloodstained shirt away in the men's room, and splashed some cold water on his face. Oh, there would be payback for this one. The scent of his own blood mixing with alcohol and saliva, the cold fire in Wolverine's eyes, and then the sudden, almost catlike- Of course he couldn't just lick his hand clean in one swipe. Nooo, Logan had to wash in between the knuckles too. Get all those hard-ta-reach places. Half-close his eyes while he was doin' it.

Creed growled at his reflection in the dingy mirror.

The faintly sticky echo of Logan's tongue passing wetly over dry skin haunted him. It raised hairs that were supposed to stay down. Not to mention-

"He is SO gonna pay for this..." Creed muttered.

Much as he would have liked to stomp back into the bar and give Logan his comeuppance across the pool table, Creed knew that wouldn't fly. This might be a biker bar, but it wasn't the nineteen fifties. /Grraghhh... Think, dammit./ Creed shrugged back into his brown leather jacket, and didn't button it.

* * *

Back in the bar, Logan had joined a dart game.

Creed's plan changed, and he grinned.

Logan was doing pretty well, for a man any downwind cop would peg for a drunk at twenty paces. He was winning, which wasn't much of a surprise. Creed grabbed a chair from a nearby table casually, and sat on it backwards to watch. When Logan turned back around from pulling his darts out of the board, Creed waved to him. Logan gave him an amused glance, but didn't wave back. His next throw was perfectly on target.

/Ah, got some discipline tonight, do ya?/ thought Creed. /...Good./ He folded his arms in front of him, over the back of the chair. Logan threw well for the next three turns, but missed on the fourth.

Wolverine looked back at Creed sourly.

"Heh heh..." Creed knew damn well why. His scent was driving Logan crazy.

Two more good throws. Time to up the ante.

"Hey. Nice jacket. Come here often?" Creed whispered. Only one person in the room would be able to hear that, and he was ignoring Creed scrupulously.

"I'm new here. Just came down from tha big apple," Creed continued, "-wanna show me the ropes?"

Another miss. Revenge was sweet, an' oh, so sneaky.

"That jacket really is somethin' else. I bet it would stick to ya if it was wet. Ya know if, well... heh- never mind..." Creed trailed off, letting Logan's imagination connect the dots.

Logan's face was carefully blank, and some accuracy returned to his throws. /Ah, he's gone ta his happy place.../ Creed thought. It was a challenge. A shock was required.

"You got that jacket in fifty-eight."

Logan almost, but didn't quite, miss. Creed bided his time while Logan's opponent took his turn. Logan glared at him behind the younger biker's back.

"Meant somethin' didn't it?" Creed continued, when it was Logan's turn, "-I mean, it HAD to if ya kept it all this time. ...That ain't the one I gave you, o'course-"

Logan's dart buried itself in the wooden backboard with a sharp 'thack!'

He turned on his heel angrily, and strode over to Creed.

"CUT THAT OUT!"

"Why?" Creed laughed, "-what am I doin'?"

"You know damn well what you're doin'!"

"I'm right though, aren't I?"

"Cut it out," Logan snapped, "-it's not funny."

"Nineteen fifty eight. Rochester, NY. December. Christmas. Christmas party..."

"No," Logan decided.

"Whaddya mean, no?" Creed bristled.

"I mean no, it was Buffalo," Logan smiled, carefully. He didn't remember the Christmas party Creed was referring to, but he did know it hadn't been in Rochester.

...He was right.

"Kiss me," Creed ordered.

"Now?"

"Now."

Logan took each side of Creed's jacket collar firmly in hand, and obliged him.

Half the bar whistled and cheered, half the bar cringed and swore, but nobody felt brave enough to break it up.

* * *

/For moments like this, you pay a lot. I should know. I've seen a few. Still... all that means is that I can tell the difference. You see, there's two kinds of moments like this. One kind you regret for the rest of your life, and the other kind, the best kind, will take a little piece of your soul if you ignore them. Here's hopin' this is the latter.

He kisses me back with something I can only describe as welcome, and I feel hands on either side of my waist. I end the kiss before too long, and he looks up at me with a quiet, secret smile. I know this face in any light, in any weather.

My god... Storm- -Jean- -Kurt- -I've lost you.

How many identities can one man have? This isn't like the old days. The X-Men are fighting a war. Do I have the balls to walk out on Gandhi?

Yes.

But should I?

I've just answered my own question. 'Should' be damned. Creed's right, I'm not like them. Not now that I remember. It's funny. I always thought I'd find out I'd been somebody terrible, but it looks like I'm just a Mutant, a biker, and a soldier. To the right student, I'm a hell of a good teacher. I own half a bar in Southeast Asia, and I can kill a man in less than point five seconds, if I choose to. Perhaps most importantly, I'm not the killer everybody warned Xavier about when he took me on.

I'm a different one. And I have my own honor.

I kiss Creed again, and I catch his eyes widening in the moment before mine close. His lips are warm, and his teeth are sharp, and my face scratches against his softly.

This too, is mine.

"Now IF ya don't mind," I say finally, "-I'm gonna go finish my game."

And I do./

-


	3. Rites of Separation

Title: To Whom it May Concern  
Chapter 3: Rites of Separation  
Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth  
Rating: R  
Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.  
Notes: Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be?'.

Summary: Just how far CAN Scott Summers be pushed?

* * *

Chapter 3: Rites of Separation

-

Creed's cell phone rang. He knocked it off the table trying to pick it up, swore, and retrieved it from the floor in the dark.

"Talk," he growled.

"This is Scott Summers. I need to speak with Wolverine," Cyclops said, briskly.

"We all got needs," Sabretooth agreed. He said nothing more.

"...If you wouldn't mind?" Cyclops asked, through gritted teeth.

"Oh. You want me ta get him for ya?" Creed asked, innocently.

"Yes. I would."

Cyclops heard a clunk as the phone was put down.

"Hey, Logan-" Creed began, in the background.

Cyclops wanted to hang up. He wanted to hang up worse than he'd wanted anything in a very long time. He also wanted to reach through the telephone wire and throttle Logan. No footsteps, no background noise, and Creed had sounded half asleep when he first picked up.

"Wake up, bub-" pause, "-don't ya growl at me, yer boss is on the line..."

"Wh-" -THUD- "#& #&()!!" The phone changed hands, "-Uh- -h'llo?"

/Definitely going to throttle Wolverine/ thought Cyclops.

"Logan?"

"Yes?"

"BUY A FUCKING PHONE! I don't EVER want to hear that kind of unprofessional GARBAGE again, GET ME?!" Cyclops yelled.

"What did you say ta him?" Logan asked, covering the mouthpiece. Creed laughed. "-Wonderful," Logan grumbled, "-I'll deal with YOU later." He uncovered the mouthpiece. "Sorry about that. What's up?"

"If you could grace us with your presence," Cyclops bit off, "-Muir Isle is under attack. Where are you?"

"Concord," Logan told him, already beginning to tire of this tone.

"Do you even have your costume with you, or should we bring one?"

"Of COURSE I have my COSTUME with me," Logan snarled.

"Do you know where the town hall is?"

"Yeah."

"Be there in fifteen minutes," Cyclops ordered, and hung up.

"Did Scotty-boy just find out what a cruel, heartless world he lives in?" Creed grinned.

"Not a word. You just pissed off a man I'm about ta go into battle with. Thanks a bunch," Logan said, pulling on his brown-and-gold costume.

"I didn't do shit!" Sabretooth protested. "He wouldna been so pissed if you'd told him the particulars."

"The 'particulars'?" Logan echoed, wryly, "-fer that, I think he'd kick me out on the spot."

"Can I come with you?"

"No. Y'can't."

"Please?"

"No."

"I brought my own costume..."

"NO!"

"Then I'll see you on the news," Creed shrugged.

"Right."

* * *

The Blackbird touched down on the Concord legal commons exactly twelve minutes later. The ramp lowered with the engines still running, and started closing again the minute Logan ran up onto it. The familiar windstorm scream of the VTOL jets kicked in louder, and the blackbird rose like a specter into the New England night sky.

Onboard, faces were tense in the low strip-lighting of the main compartment. Cannonball, Rogue, Beast, Psylocke, Gambit and Archangel. Not a bad lineup. Cyclops and Jean were flying.

"Good to have you with us," Storm was working the ramp controls. Logan nodded shortly. When Storm had -that- tone, the time for idle chit-chat had passed.

"What do we got?" Logan asked.

"A.I.M. Mechanics. -Hydra," Storm explained, "-they landed an invasion force on the beach, and more tunneled in from somewhere out to sea."

"Any idea what they want?"

"Not yet. There were no demands, they just attacked."

"Terrific. Is the military playing?"

"The Irish and British air forces are defending their coastlines, but they will not be foolish enough to come between us and Hydra."

"Huh," Wolverine saw an empty seat between Cannonball and Psylocke. As he approached, Psylocke's violet eyes met his with a force that was almost physical.

He paused.

Unlike most telepaths, he -knew- she would look into his head without asking. It was understood. She'd been there before, and if Betsy could handle what she found, she was welcome. One of Psylocke's observations from the time she'd mind-scanned both Sabretooth and him occurred in Logan's head.

/...They so love what they do./ -She was trying to understand.

Logan thought of the day he'd buried his claws in Sabretooth's chest and hissed, "I knew you'd slip up."

He thought of Kyle, lying bloody and unconscious on the elevator floor after having his head smashed into a sharp computer console by a grenade blast, and he thought about how good it felt to see him start moving again.

He thought of the last morning on Rumika beach, the smell of wet sand and palm leaves, and gunpowder. Raindrops hitting Creed's dark green slicker as he lit one of the cigarettes he'd stolen off of his own, and passed it to Logan underhand so the rain wouldn't extinguish it.

And then he remembered the look on Creed's face when he'd said, "It was Buffalo."

A tear of frustration and rage escaped from the inner corner of one of Betsy's beautiful, almond-shaped eyes, and she looked away. Logan wiped the tear off with the side of his thumb in silent apology, and took his seat.

Cannonball watched this exchange sidelong, and knew that he would probably never find out why it had taken place. Logan caught him.

"Been a long time, Sam."

"Uh, yeah. ...Where you been?"

"Florida," Logan told him.

"Great fishing down there."

"Yup."

* * *

Wolverine found he didn't have much to say to the boy. Cannonball had come a long way from his New Mutants days, but he'd heard of the X-Men as a legend first, and as a reality second, and nothing could really fix that. Logan had never noticed how much the boy spoke to the legends rather than the people HE knew, but it was clear to him now.

Restless, Logan made for the front of the aircraft.

"Hello, Logan," Jean flashed him a smile, and then returned her attention to flying. With her powers, Logan was no longer sure if flying manually was a habit or an affectation. Either way, he'd never mentioned it. It was probably like the way he could buy lunch or kill it with his claws. Some things just felt more natural than others.

"Good ta see you again, Red," Logan hugged her around one side of the pilot's seat. She smelled great. Somebody in this cabin smelled pretty angry, though.

Best not to confuse the situation.

Logan drew back, and considered Cyclops. Scott was slouched in the co-pilot's seat, arms folded. He looked back at Logan steadily, or as much so as his eyes being shielded by his visor would allow.

"Jean, I want a word with Logan in private. Would you mind?"

"Not at all," Jean set up the necessary telepathic bridge.

/Logan/ Scott began, /-you either tell me what's going on right now, or you're out./

/Should I be flattered ya even asked?/

/Don't push me. You're not as irreplaceable as you think/ Scott told him, coldly.

/Maybe I -should- leave./

/Less testosterone, more sanity/ Jean cut in, irritated that these two would start fighting in HER head.

/.../

/The question was 'what's going on', right?/ Logan tried.

/That's right./

/I'm gettin' back what I lost to the Weapon X project, with interest./

/Wildchild, you mean?/

/Kyle, yeah./ Logan nodded.

/Logan, I know what Sabretooth answering the phone like that meant. I've been married twice, for god's sake. Is he blackmailing you somehow?/

/Don't you get it, Cyke? Creed IS what I lost to the Weapon X project!/ Logan snarled.

/You mean- -but- -I thought you were straight/ Scott protested.

/That ain't the point./

/The heck it-/

/I'm straight where YOU'RE concerned/ Logan assured him, /-Creed's somethin' of an exception./

/Ugh.../

/Now look, pal-/

/No, YOU look! Taste aside, Sabretooth is a murdering PSYCHOPATH. How the hell can we trust you if you just ignore that?/ Scott demanded.

/Who says I'm IGNORIN' it?/ Logan shot back, /-it's like I said when I left, Creed's mine, and I'll deal with 'im./

/What are you going to do that three telepaths couldn't?/ Scott challenged.

/There's more'n one way into a man's brain, ya know?/ Wolverine popped one set of claws to illustrate.

/I'll believe it when I see it./

/Don't hold yer breath. -He don't trust you guys either./

/SABRETOOTH is scared of US?/

/Nah, it's just a general prejudice against bein' locked in basements/ Logan shrugged.

/How can you joke about this? He nearly killed Psylocke!/ Scott reminded him, angrily.

/And what was she tryin' ta do ta him?/ Logan pointed out, merciless.

/Whose side are you on?/ Cyclops demanded, flatly.

/If you don't know by now, ya never will./

/That's a cop-out, and you know it./

/What do you want me ta say, Slim? I put a CLAW through 'is BRAIN. I killed my-/ Wolverine broke off. /I picked the X-Men over my partner once already. How DARE you question my loyalties?/

/Because when the chips were down, you tried to kill a man under my protection in cold blood/ Scott told him.

/That's bull! I -know- Sabretooth. I KNEW he'd escape from anything eventually, and he said he'd kill all o' you when he did. Punchin' his ticket was the only way I could keep you people ALIVE/ Wolverine argued.

/So what's changed?/ asked Cyclops.

/A hell of a lot more'n I thought/ Logan spat, /-first you let the kiddies get away with wringin' LeBeau though a kangaroo court-/

Jean broke the contact between them abruptly.

"That's IT. If you two want to tear each other apart, do it out loud. In the mean time, buckle up," She banked the jet left, and out the right side window, there was a distant explosion. A.I.M., the technological arm of Hydra, was one of the few organizations that COULD detect the blackbird in stealth mode.

* * *

Muir island had it's own security system, mostly tentacle-based defense robots and surveillance cameras. It also had Excalibur, though most of the group had been dealing with another matter on Crete at the time of the attack. Jean telekinetically knocked the second wave of missiles headed for the blackbird out of commission. The road and the field around the main complex were alive with hovering gun-platforms and green-and-yellow suited Hydra troops trying to subdue Nightcrawler and Wolfsbane. Several hover-sleds and a troop carrier lay unmarked but useless on the rocky slope back towards the beach, and that looked like Shadowcat's work. Jean opened the throttles wide as the gun platforms started targeting the blackbird as well, and looked for a place to land that wouldn't get them shot. Nightcrawler bamfed into the main compartment looking like he'd been used to mop Madison square garden, grabbed Rogue, bamfed out again, then bamfed back half a minute later. He nearly fell on his face, but Archangel caught him. It was soon clear that there WAS no safe place to land here, so Beast took the controls, and everyone else bailed out. Jean took Cyclops, Archangel took Psylocke, and Storm took Gambit. Canonball turned around to look for Wolverine, but saw that he'd already bailed out-

-alone. It was only forty feet to the ground from here, but he'd never seen anybody do that before without flight or invulnerability. Wolverine hit the slope below and dive-rolled a few times, then got up, and started running. There had to be some kind of a trick to it. Cannonball didn't remember Logan healing -that- fast. But... ...What kind of maniac jumps off forty-foot-high cliffs over and over until he gets it just right? /Yuck./

McCoy was mission control. He had Archangel drop Psylocke off on the roof of the complex itself, and then work on the barbarians at the gate. Gambit went in to meet Psylocke. Cyclops and Cannonball got the hover sleds, and the three graces, Storm, Jean, and Rogue, went after the Hydra ships off the coast and the airborne drones. By this time, Wolverine was up to his boots in claw-slashed Hydra soldiers. They'd only sent a squad or two at first, but soon realized their mistake and dog-piled him with thirty at once.

Yeah. Big deal.

The Hydra commander got the hint, pulled back the 'squishy' troops, and sent in a pair of armored mechs instead. Wolverine set to work on the joints and thick black hydraulic cables.

* * *

Cyclops and Cannonball took out most of the hover sleds, but the largest vehicle on the field, a tank with depleted-uranium armor plating, refused to go down. Then the driver made the mistake of remaining in one place for too long, and Shadowcat phased up out of the ground and through the tank's main fire-control computer. She scampered out through the locked top hatch of the tank a minute later, and Cannonball snatched her off before the tank's crew could get the door open. Psylocke found Dr. MacTaggart, and Gambit made sure nothing could touch them. Only the airborne 'evil-Frisbee' drones were getting inside anyway. Out to sea, the Hydra fleet was submerging. Rogue grabbed one ship before it could go too deep, and beached it on top of the highest point of the island like Noah's ark. Jean sealed the hull and all the doors. Those fools were going -nowhere- until SHIELD arrived.

Storm blasted another with lightning, but it blew the main fuel tank, and she had to drop the temperature enough to freeze the water all around while using the wind to contain the oil spill. She wasn't about to kill off four miles of Scottish coastline if she could help it. Wolverine left his ex-opponents on the field like a pair of huge dropped action figures. He'd taken care of one, and been almost finished with the second when Scott blasted the mech's head apart. That had ticked Logan off severely, but he figured Scott was trying to do just that, so he just went into the complex to see how Gambit and Psylocke were doing with Moira. /Nice try, preppy-boy./

What he missed was Scott's reaction when he saw how many of Wolverine's OTHER opponents weren't going to get up.

* * *

Wolfsbane shifted from her wolf form to her Human one as she approached Cyclops, and Cannonball touched down beside her.

"Sam!" Wolfsbane pounced on Cannonball, and hugged him.

Cyclops was glad SOMEBODY didn't seem too disturbed, but that's didn't change the green-and-yellow suited bodies that littered the drive in front of him. He remembered this side of Wolverine. He'd seen it before, both during the Brood incident and then again in Japan, and again... Logan was, among other things, the emergency fail-safe of the X-Men, but using him always had a cost. If he'd worked out a better strategy of HOW to use Logan before they reached Scotland instead of trying to browbeat the man, maybe this wouldn't have happened. The Hydra soldiers they'd fought today -were- gun-toting terrorists, but they were still Human, and there was no telling if Wolverine's savagery would have been tempered by these people being... a government militia, for example.

This was the man he was supposed to trust to teach Sabretooth how to behave?

Fat #& chance.

Archangel alighted nearby, surveyed the carnage, and exchanged an uneasy glance with Cyclops.

* * *

Nightcrawler bamfed into the complex once he had the energy to attempt it, and found Psylocke, Gambit, Shadowcat, and Moira in the radio room. They were safe, and Shadowcat was telling Colossus what had happened over a video-phone. The rest of Excalibur had finally found a way off Crete, but they were still at least two hours away. Wolverine walked into the radio room a moment later.

Psylocke and Gambit weren't surprised. Peter noticed him in the background behind Shadowcat. Moira froze, staring at Logan, and then burst into tears.

"...What?" asked Wolverine, uncomfortably. /That's the second beautiful gal I've made cry today. What am I doin' wrong, here?/

Gambit tried holding Moira and using his empathic talent to calm her down, but it didn't work.

"C'est deux," Gambit observed to Wolverine, dubiously.

"I know, I know... Moira, what's wrong? Wha'd I do?"

"Ah'm sorry-" Moira sobbed. Shadowcat looked over at Dr. MacTaggart sharply. Whenever Moira started apologizing, things often went to hell in a hand basket -very- quickly, "-ah didn't know what 'e was-"

"Did ya kill anybody?" Logan interrupted.

"Nae, but-"

"Then I forgive you. Now shhh." Logan instructed. That didn't work either. What did work was holding her very tightly and letting her cry herself out against his shoulder. As she did so, Logan started to wonder about what Moira had said. 'Ah didn't know what 'e was?' and she'd started crying when she saw HIM? She couldn't be talking about...

"Yer talkin' about Kyle, ain't ya?" Logan asked her. Moira nodded, and the question set her off again. "Moira, Wildchild's fine. I talked to 'im a month ago."

"But- 'e'll never be-"

"Were you the one that fixed him up ta look Human for a while?" Logan asked.

"Y-yes."

"It didn' take. Not yer work, nor anyone else's. Kyle's just as he should be, healin' factor an' all."

Kurt, Kitty and the others were all paying -very- close attention now.

"My crownin' glory," Moira said, bitterly, "-my patient recovered from my blunderin'."

"Ya tried Moira, an' ya gave 'im hope," Logan's voice sounded a little forced to his own ears, but Moira seemed to be buying it, "-Kyle's okay now. We'll hash out the rest later."

"A'right..." Moira agreed, "-someplace quieter."

/What the hell does she mean by that?/ Logan wondered.

* * *

The aftermath of Hydra's A.I.M. troops versus the X-Men made the BBC evening news. Rogue was thrilled. Cyclops wasn't. Logan wondered if this was Creed's idea of, 'I'll see you on the news'. SHIELD sent over a mop-up and detainment crew for the Hydra prisoners. Nick Fury was on it, but he was mostly trying to get a look inside Dr. MacTaggart's hospital facility. Logan suspected he was going to be hounded for a floor plan and what went on there at some point, and he had no intention of telling Fury anything. It was one of those things, like not being able to tell the X-Men about SHIELD's undercover agents.

SHIELD had an agent inside the X-mansion, for example, and the agent had paid dearly to stay there. Not that many really trusted him, but still...

Logan knew. Double agents were more than just hostile spies. Sometimes they were more of a communications link between agencies that were on the same side, ensuring that even when they couldn't share information due to jurisdiction or internal politics, the information would still arrive on the desk of whoever needed it. Double agents could also be disavowed and burned if necessary, so they tended to be very careful with the information they handled.

Wolverine didn't envy the Cajun his thankless job, but somebody had to do it, and Logan had done his time long ago. He didn't trust Gambit completely, but he'd tested the boy by bringing him to Japan during the gift-wrapped-cyborg disaster, and that had cleared up Logan's main concerns.

Now if he could just keep Gambit and Sabretooth from trying to murder each other on sight...

* * *

Kyle fished his cell phone out of the pocket of his long brown trench coat.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Kyle."

"Logan!" Kyle switched the phone to his other ear, delighted, "-I'm in Denver. Where are you?"

"Scotland."

There was a pause, and a soft indrawn breath on Kyle's end.

"Are you mad?" Kyle asked, uncomfortably.

"At MacTaggart or you?" Logan said, noncommittally.

"Uh- -are you?" Kyle repeated.

"Yeah, I'm mad," Logan sighed, "-I thought ya said Alpha Flight was who got ya to look Human."

"Well... Department H kinda failed, so they gave me to Moira. -She was the first one who actually ASKED me what I wanted ta be," Kyle explained.

"I figured as much."

"Dr. Mac's all right, Logan. Don't like, guilt trip her, okay?"

"She does that on 'er own," Logan assured him, "-I'm just glad she's wrong."

/He called to make sure I was okay/ Kyle realized.

"Hey, why ARE you in Scotland?"

"Just helpin' Excalibur with a little pest-control problem," Logan smirked, "-the newsies probably know more'n I do by now. Ya know how it goes..."

"Yeah, I do. You're sayin' the X-Men just made the morning edition," Kyle translated.

"People gotta have somethin' ta put 'em off their Wheaties. It's a rule," Logan explained.

"Don't I know it," Kyle snorted.

"How 'bout you? You takin' care o' my scoot?"

"Yeah, the bike's good. I had to get a helmet in Wisconsin, though. The cop didn't care if I could heal from a crash or not."

"How'd it go in B.C.?" Logan asked.

"Uh... I'd rather not get inta that over the phone."

"That good, eh?"

"Hell hath no fury, man," Kyle shuddered.

Logan noticed Kitty Pryde perched on a chair nearby, watching him.

Not having a clue why she would do this, Logan hoped it didn't have to do with something that would make her cry, because he really didn't want to go three for three.

"You comin' home anytime soon?"

"October. Is the beach house still standing?"

"Funny you should ask..." Logan laughed.

"Are you kidding?"

"Nope. Call in when yer ready ta come home."

"What happened to it?" Kyle asked, before he could bite his tongue.

"Hurricane Francis, a scrap, an' a lot o' C-4," Wolverine told him, smugly.

"Sorry I asked," Kyle groaned.

"Hey, there's somebody who wants ta talk to you."

"Who?"

"Here," Logan held out the phone to Kitty experimentally. If she wanted to talk to him she'd play it off, but if she wanted to talk to Kyle, she'd take it. Kitty plucked the phone out of his hand, and started talking to Kyle.

/Huh./

Logan left in search of Moira MacTaggart.

* * *

He found her out on a heath behind the complex, away from the crime-scene-do-not-cross taped areas. Neither of them said anything for a long while. Logan crouched down and ran his fingers through a patch of heather. The pale, interlocking chains at the plant's tips scattered onto the ground at his touch. It was late in the season for the flowers, but nothing in the world beat wild heather for an outdoor mattress. It grew in the Canadian Rockies too.

"I don't know what t' say t' ye, Logan," Moira said, finally.

"Well, I got th' apology part," Logan replied, carefully, "-an' you didn't kill nobody. ...I'm guessin' this is about your boy as well as mine."

Moira nodded.

"Ah couldn't help either one of 'em. There's times when ah wished- -but I couldnae wish this on anybody..."

"And now?"

"You understand, don't ye?" There was a brittle edge in Moira's voice that Wolverine didn't like at all.

"There's differences," Logan warned her.

"But ye -know- what it's like tae have a son ye might have to kill, and ye can't fix. Tae keep secrets for years. Tae trade blood with 'is father..."

"Lady, I didn' HAVE Kyle, if that's what yer thinkin', an' Creed ain't yer Joe," Logan growled at her, "-do I know what it's like ta think I might have ta kill Kyle 'cause there's somethin' wrong with 'im that I can't fix? Yeah, I do. But that's as far as it goes, get me?"

"...Aye," Moira said, crestfallen.

There was a silence.

"That said, ya need ta get off this rock, MacTaggart," Wolverine told her.

"This -rock- is m'home," Moira bristled.

"Maybe, but it's killin' you. Come ta Canada with me."

"Ah have work, you know?"

"You can push yourself a lot harder when there's no-one around ta see it, can't ya?" Logan observed, "-I'll bet you wish ya could get Excalibur out o' yer hair, don't ya?"

Moira wouldn't look at him.

"Yeah, that's what you're doin', ain't it? Like yer mind's on a train with no stops, until you almost wish fer that break in the tracks..."

"Damn ye," Moira whispered.

"Only the good die young, Moira," Logan smirked.

"DAMN YE!" She screamed at him.

"That's better," Logan nodded, "-now. You wanna keep dyin' on this rock, or put yer head back together?"

"Maybe ye don't understand this after all," Moira thought out loud, "-you never had tae follow through."

"Oh, that's great. First I'm yer new best pal, an' now I don't understand. Yer good, girl."

"Why are ye doin' this?" Moira demanded.

"'Cause nobody else has. 'Cause my head's out o' the sand for once. Maybe 'cause ya DO remind me o' me."

"Xavier can't help me," Moira told him.

"No shit. The man's still half in love with you, an' the other half is runnin' guilty fer lettin' you marry that other creep. That's a recipe fer a shrink-patient disaster right out o' the textbook."

"What do YOU 'ave in mind? Gettin' blasted at the pub?" Moira shot back.

"Close, but no."

"Then what?"

"You'll see when we get there," Logan promised.

"You're havin' me on."

"No, I ain't. And whaddya got ta lose?"

Logan didn't fly the blackbird often. So seldom, in fact, that only a few of his teammates remembered that he could. They would remember after this.

* * *

When the X-Men finally got back to the mansion at ten o'clock that night, the mood was a subdued one. Wolverine hadn't actually -stolen- the blackbird, just taken it for a cross-Atlantic spin and left it at the Xavier School. He'd stolen Dr. MacTaggart, but Scott couldn't do much about that either, because professor X had spoken with her telepathically when the jet landed, and she was no unwilling prisoner.

Logan had however, crossed a line.

Willing or not, nobody just TAKES Moira MacTaggart. She was one of only a handful of regular Humans the X-Men trusted completely and she was, simply put, too important to lose. Emotional attachments aside, she was in the middle of working on a cure for the 'Legacy' virus. She would do it too, Scott had faith in that. For Logan to blatantly snag Moira for a Kerouac-style road trip in spite of this, a lot of things had to have gone wrong at once, and the list started with Scott's assumption that he could recall Wolverine to active duty in one day after three months out of the team. Clearly, he'd been wrong about that. Logan's combat skills were fine, heck, better than ever, but his teamwork was shot, and his accountability was nonexistent.

And if he brought SABRETOOTH into this disaster...

* * *

Logan stopped for the night in North Bay, Ontario. It was a sizeable burg on the shores of lake Nipissing, East of lake Huron. The sky seemed huge in this part of the country, especially mirrored in the lake from the dark highway into town. On the back of Logan's new motorbike, with very little idea where she was, Moira felt about twelve. She was also wondering if this had been such a good idea in the first place. Sure, she knew Charles, and Logan was one of his X-Men, but beyond that, what did she actually know about the man? Rumors. Stories. Incomplete medical files. More than most people ever found out about him, but still far too little to trust his motives on the basis of a few similar experiences, however unique.

Logan parked between a B&B and a dock that rented fishing boats. He lit a cigar, and watched some guy walking along the wharf in the dark. Moira took her helmet off, shook out her short, shiny auburn hair, and carried the helmet with her by the chin strap. Logan said nothing. Moira thought for a moment, than took the cigar out of his mouth neatly, and kissed him. Logan kissed her back, but he didn't touch her aside from that. He tasted like peanuts and cigar smoke, and she tasted like black coffee. Both of them kissed well. The cigar taste was just close enough to the taste of pipe smoke, and his sideburns reminded her of Sean Cassidy. The memory stung. When she drew back, Moira watched Logan's face carefully.

Even in her late thirties, Moira MacTaggart was a knockout, and Logan knew it.

"...Don't do that again," he said finally, reclaiming his cigar and biting it.

"Just checking," she said, unapologetically.

"Well, now you know," he agreed.

...Maybe she could trust him.

* * *

"I don't CARE!" Sabretooth snarled at Cyclops, Archangel and Rogue, "-all I know is that I let ya borrow Logan this morning, an' now ya won't give 'im BACK. Outta the way!" Nobody moved. The three X-Men still barred Creed's path to the mansion.

"You ain't welcome," Rogue told him frostily, arms folded.

"Well y'all ain't welcome ta Logan either. MOVE, Dixie-chick!"

"I've had just about enough of this," Warren said, deadly quiet.

"Took tha words right out o' my mouth," Creed sneered at him.

Professor X and Jean showed up.

Creed knew damn well he should probably high-tail it at this point, but he was pissed, and he wasn't making the mistake of letting them keep Logan again.

"Rollin' out the heavies, huh? Gotcha spooked? Maybe got a shotgun under that lap blanket, Chuck?"

"Please LEAVE," ordered Xavier.

"Lemmie hear that from Logan," Creed retorted.

Xavier and Jean exchanged glances. They could provoke Creed into attacking them and then subdue him. It wouldn't even be hard, with these odds. Sabretooth was standing barely twelve feet away from Scott and Warren though, and he'd probably lunge for one or both of them as soon as he realized he was being attacked. Neither of the telepaths were willing to risk that. Then again, all Creed wanted from them was proof that they didn't have Logan chained up in the basement. Letting Creed into the mansion was completely out of the question, and they couldn't put Moira in danger by sending Creed after Logan without warning, however...

Xavier reached out and telepathically followed his awareness of Moira to Logan. He usually would have needed Cerebro to do this on such short notice, but with Jean 'boosting' his signal it was both possible and impressive as hell. As with stage magic, a wise telepath always made the easy look difficult and the impossible look like child's play.

Creed's cell phone rang.

"That had better be you," he answered it.

Pause.

"You son-of-a-bitch. D'you have any CLUE where I'm standin' right now?" Sabretooth demanded.

Pause.

"#& WESTCHESTER, yeah. I'm lookin' Cyclops right in 'is rose-colored-glasses. Where the HELL are you?"

Pause.

"That's nice, Logan. WHY?"

Pause.

"Fer once tha prick is right. BUY A FUCKING PHONE! An' when ya do, CALL me," Creed ended the call, and slapped the phone shut with an audible 'clack'.

"Next time you see Wolverine," Cyclops told Sabretooth, "-tell him he's out of the X-Men until he can convince me otherwise."

"No skin off my nose," Creed shrugged.

With a last, amused, sweeping glance at the assembled defenders of justice and good, Sabretooth left.

* * *

Logan stared at the old, tan, rotary-dial phone on the table between his bed and Moira's. Creed had never hung up on him before. He had no idea what was happening on the lawn of the X-mansion at this very moment. He'd forgotten to ask if anyone had been hurt before he'd called, but he figured the length of the call meant the X-Men weren't angry enough for that to have been the case.

All he'd done was forget to check in after the mission, and either Creed or one of the X-Men could easily have died as a result. Christ onna crutch. Logan ran his fingers through his hair, then grabbed the phone again, and dialed.

"Talk," Creed answered testily, after one ring.

"It's me."

"Well, that was fast."

"Motel phone."

"That ain't what I told ya," Creed snapped.

"Where are you now?" Logan asked.

"Driving."

"What happened?"

"I gutted a couple, an' ol' one-eye fired you," Creed said, matter-of-factly.

"You better be kiddin'."

"Only about the first one. You really are fired."

"DAMN! That-"

"Give it a rest, Logan. You were just LOOKIN' fer an excuse... This does make you the first X-Man ever kicked out though, don't it?" Creed noted, smugly.

"I'll call ya tomorrow," Logan said, tiredly.

"That's if I don't find ya first."

"I've got Moira MacTaggart with me."

"WHY?" Creed asked.

"'Cause she needed a vacation, an' it ain't like I've got real pressin' work concerns at the moment," Logan explained, sarcastically.

"Have you boned 'er yet?"

"No."

"You mad I asked?"

"Very."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

"You do that."

They hung up.

Logan swore quietly in the dark, and then put his costume back on. He'd been in civvies for the ride North, but this seemed more appropriate. The brown and golden-yellow fabric still held a few rips and bloodstains from earlier. Unlike many of the X-Men's uniforms, the only 'X' design on it was a wide metal rectangle that locked over the buckle of the red belt. He left it in the pocket of his jeans. Moira was awake, but pretending not to be. Logan wrote her a note saying he'd be back later, and disappeared out the window.

From the roof of the boathouse next door, Logan saw the light in the window go on, then nothing, and then he heard the staccato cranks of the rotary dial as Moira called someone.

Initiative. Good for her.

* * *

Wolverine didn't want to stay on the roof of the boathouse. He didn't dare leave, because that would lead Creed to Moira first, but he felt that he had to get as far away from people as possible. Now. He felt like a bomb on a mercury switch. If somebody so much as jogged his elbow tonight- -and he wouldn't, that was the really unbelievable part. If some local cop came by and started yelling at him to get down off the roof, he'd somehow keep from shredding the poor bastard. But goddamn, this was like trying not to drop a lit chunk of coal.

/Knowin' you can't if you ever want to look in a mirror again, an' your mind's screaming through your body to

just

let

GO.

An' somehow, you just-/ -sit there. The wavelets on the lake's surface flickered softly, disappearing and always there, like drops of rain, trying to bring this fire down. Wolverine appreciated it.

Alone, with the X-Men, he would have held this coal until it burned itself out on a grate made of the bones through the skin of his palm. He'd done it before, he'd do it again. The way Rogue could never let her skin touch others, the way Cyclops guarded his eyes, so Wolverine guarded this rage. But &#, did it HURT...

Sure, he could always see what the danger room had to offer, but it wasn't REAL. IT was a mechanical appendage of the professor, a Teflon tit, a smothering benevolence, like punching a pillow against a wall. The fucker just didn't BLEED...

"And you're just now figurin' that out?" Sabretooth laughed, from behind him. He was in costume too.

/Have I been saying all that out loud?/ Logan wondered... -And when had the crescent moon gotten so much lower in the sky?

Wolverine snapped around into a crouch, and pointed his right set of claws at Creed's head, as if holding a gun. /Let's go, bub.../

* * *

He'd meant to lead Sabretooth away from the boathouse. Further down the beach, or maybe out onto that dark little island behind the one the ferries passed by.

Of course, that was then.

Wolverine hit Sabretooth with a straight tackle, knocking both of them off the roof, and landed on him two stories below. His knee took out two of Sabretooth's ribs with a satisfying crunch on impact. The heavy wooden planks of the pier splintered, but didn't give. Knowing better than to waste time fighting to get air into his lungs with Wolverine sitting on him, Sabretooth boosted him over his head with a quick toss, and then took a breath. He heard a thud, then a splash, and looked over to see where Wolverine had landed. He'd hit the side of a boat and fallen into the channel between the hull and the pier.

Wolverine would be up soon enough. Sabretooth stood, and kept his breathing shallow so his ribs could heal. Wolverine climbed back onto the pier, dripping wet. He looked ready to attack again, but- -suddenly his claws retracted, and he snatched a pulley-block from a coil of rope nearby. He snapped it in Sabretooth's direction, using the weight on the end to turn the mooring rope into a bullwhip. Sabretooth could have ducked. He didn't. He punched the block instead, shattering the wood and knocking the metal guide wheels into so many beads around the rope. He grabbed the end of the line as it snapped past him, and yanked hard. Wolverine let go of his end, and drop-kicked a wooden crate into a sideways slide aimed at his opponent's feet. Sabretooth jumped over it, and pounced on him.

This time, both of them hit the water. Wolverine's claws were out faster than thought could follow, trying to carve a hole in Sabretooth's stomach. That earned him a hard elbow to the top of the head, and a deep bite on his right forearm. Wolverine pushed himself downwards underwater, buying time until the spots in his vision cleared. Sabretooth was having none of it. He made a diving grab, and yanked Wolverine's hood off along with a handful of his hair. Missed. The water was still for a moment, and then Sabretooth dove just as suddenly. Wolverine's claws sliced into the wrack covering one of the pier's pylons in exactly the place where Sabretooth had been a split-second before. Sabretooth surfaced to one side of him, and sliced Wolverine's back open with his claws, four deep, nerve-severing cuts from shoulder blades to the top of his red belt, running parallel to his spine.

It was a toss-up whether the sudden loss of feeling in his entire chest was worse than the column of fire encircling the damaged nerves, but his arms and legs still worked, and Wolverine's only thought was to keep moving. He whipped around and buried both sets of claws in Sabretooth's chest, locking them together face to face. The water was black anyway, but the smell of blood was thick above the pond weed and fish scents, and Wolverine could feel something cold at the very bottom of the left side of his ribcage, like the swirling lake-water flooding a punctured lung. That wouldn't do. He shoved down sharply with his claws, pushing himself partially out of the water and wrenching his claws down into Sabretooth's chest at a different angle at the same time. The cold in his chest began to fade for a moment, then stayed as it was. His lung had finally sealed, but it was still half flooded. He'd have to cough that up sometime later. Muddy water. Still beat the hell out of having to cough up blood after a lung shot.

Sabretooth decided, for the umpteenth time, that he didn't like cold water. He hit Wolverine square in the chest with both fists at the same time, and hoped he'd have the strength to move when those six claws came out. A second of blinding red and black passed, then two, and then he could think again. Sabretooth grabbed Wolverine by the front of his costume, and threw him into the underside of the pier. Sabretooth dove, and swam underwater until his fingers found the sandy lake bottom in the shallows. He slogged up on shore quickly, and waited in the knee-deep water for Wolverine to surface.

Too late, he realized that he already had. Wolverine dropped down on Sabretooth from where he clung on the underside of the boards, and came very close to slicing his throat. before Sabretooth jammed two clawed fingers in his left eye. Wolverine roared in pain, and boxed him squarely on the side of the head. Sabretooth answered this with a left-handed uppercut, and the match devolved into a common school yard brawl. The sand, the bottom of the pier, the weed-slick wooden pilings, all were fair game as leverage, a foothold, or a handy surface against which to crack a skull. Sabretooth's claws found the inside of Logan's wrist, shredding his skin like so much newspaper, and Logan unsheathed his claws as well. The battle resumed.

It could have gone on until sunrise, but for one slip of Logan's foot. He went down hard, and Creed landed on him. They lay there for a second, seeing who would move first. It was Creed. He tore Logan's windpipe open with a quick flash of his teeth, and held Logan's head down against the sand with one hand fisted in his wet hair. A warm breath brushed Creed's face, not from Logan's mouth, but from the hole in the front of his neck. Creed blinked, then felt something that made him freeze. Logan's knuckles pressed against his forehead. As graphic as ripping Logan's throat out had been, it hadn't incapacitated him. He had a second before Logan popped claws, but at the speed Sabretooth's thoughts were moving, a second would be enough to at least turn the blow into a slash rather than a p-

* * *

Logan stared at the blood running down the top of his wrist from the three puncture wounds in Creed's forehead. His glove was gone, he didn't remember when, and the blood had a clear path all the way back to his shoulder. He didn't move for a few seconds. He just stared into the wide-open ice-blue eyes that had so suddenly gone blank above him. Logan pulled his claws out carefully, and listened. There was quiet for so long, and then Sabretooth started breathing again. It was slow, as if he was asleep. Logan rolled Creed off of him onto his back on the bank. This would be a long time healing, and Logan wondered if he'd really gone too far this time. It had nearly killed him to do this to Creed originally, down in the basement of the mansion. He'd shattered YEARS of self-control for that one. This time, he'd just DONE it. It hadn't even occurred to him to let Sabretooth surrender.

/...Creed's no Joe MacTaggart, but I didn't say anything about me, did I?/

This fight was different. It meant something. But Logan couldn't for the life of him remember what it was.

He'd won, so now what?

The fight in the snow last November that had ended with him shackled to a tree flickered through his head, broken by black gulfs.

Something with a right-angle glittered in the hole left in Creed's forehead by Logan's center claw. He went after it. His fingers wouldn't fit, but it was close enough to the surface that his mouth did the trick. Logan spat the piece of metal aside. It was the front half of a barbed arrowhead, of all things. No... it was... an anchor. To hold the programming chip he'd destroyed the first time. Interesting. Then again, how else would a chip stay where it belonged instead of being ejected by Creed's healing factor?

/And if Magneto took all the metal out of me, not just the Adamantium, then any chips in my head are gone too, which would leave me free to-

-Remember.

...Of course./

That hadn't been a back-scratch he'd gotten earlier. Getting kicked out of the X-Men was a big deal to him. He was hurting bad, and Creed knew it. This fight had been about whether or not Logan was still okay to 'drive'. To be their leader.

/My hands think I am./

* * *

He was floating, that was Creed's first thought. There was a hand under the small of his back, and someone was licking his face. Felt kinda nice. His head hurt a little, though.

Wolverine saw that he was awake, and smiled at him warmly.

"Xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx, xx?"

Sabretooth was confused, so he didn't answer. He smiled back instead.

"Xx, hxx? Txxxx xxxx," Wolverine assured him.

Blah blah blah. Whatever. They were lying in the shallows of the lake, somewhere far away from the pier. Somewhere with trees. It felt like early morning. Sabretooth closed his eyes again, and Logan resumed licking his face, unhurriedly.

/Think I'll enjoy this for a while.../ Creed decided.

* * *

After hearing what had happened last night from Jean, Moira wasn't surprised that Logan had taken off. He could be gone for days, apparently. Still, he'd brought her to North Bay, Ontario, and she wasn't ready to go home just yet. She went down to the docks the next morning, and walked along the road by the shore. The Wolverine had knocked something loose, and she wanted time to examine it. She hadn't allowed herself to be openly selfish about anything in years. She'd wanted to be selfish about Charles, but hadn't. He was like some great, soaring, white winged-bird, understanding what she wanted but unable to stay on the ground that long, too devoted to his dream to take a partner who couldn't fly.

Joe MacTaggart, now he had no trouble being selfish. But he'd wanted her, and he'd asked, and sometimes that's all it takes. It had ended horribly, but out of the ashes, she'd gotten her beloved son. The young woman's dream had shattered again when his powers became apparent, and he became the Mutant body-snatcher Proteus.

She'd kept him with her, locked where he could do no damage, and thrown herself into her genetic researches, searching for a way to free him without indirectly committing murder.

Sean Cassidy, the likeable 'Banshee' of the X-Men, had surprised her then, at one of the otherwise darkest times. He was a sexy and devoted gentleman, straight out of the pages of a dime-store romance. Sean set to work putting her heart to rights, and had she been anything other than the once-a-generation tragic genius that she was, he would have succeeded.  
As it was, he was now on -this- side of the ocean, running Generation X.

And Moira's son was dead.

Mary Shelly, Anne Rice. They'd both done the best work of their lives after the deaths of their children, but could she? The Legacy virus, the most deadly threat to Mutants since Humanity itself, was her task. If she failed to stop it here, it would most likely jump to Humans, as AIDS had gone from being 'that gay disease' to washing over the entire third world like a time-delayed scourge.

Maybe she should write a letter to Anne Rice.

And tell her what? The plot of 'The Tale of the Body Thief' with mutants instead of vampires? -No. But then what? Stay as she was, empty but driven?

Should she flip the rest of the world the bird and go off in search of happiness for a year or two as Wolverine seemed to be doing, give her thoughts time to settle like the flakes in a snow globe and THEN go back to her lab?

Which of these was the woman who could crack the Legacy virus?

* * *

When Moira returned to their room at the B&B, she heard the shower running, and- -Sabretooth and Moira MacTaggart looked at each other like a couple of mildly surprised cats. Moira looked to Creed like an attractive, though conservative, college professor. Her green woolen skirt was too long, her glasses were too big, and she smelled like café latte and tears. Her hand stayed on the doorknob, forgotten.

Creed looked to Moira like a burly Glouster fisherman on a Saturday. He was sitting on the edge of one of the beds in a pair of blue jeans and nothing else. He had a black shirt in his hands, but wasn't too intent on it. His blonde hair was still wet, the ends curling just below the level of his chin, and blending with his sideburns. As a geneticist, Moira picked out the signs of his mutation in seconds, and as Kyle's doctor, she recognized them.

Creed decided that this peach was unlikely to start screaming or produce a weapon in the next few seconds, so he pulled the shirt on over his head. Moira closed the door, and adjusted her glasses.

"So. MacTaggart, right?" Creed said, briskly.

"Yes. -Hello."

"I've heard a lot about you lately," Creed told her, digging through a tan canvas suitcase. It wasn't an accusation, but it sure as hell wasn't a welcome. It was in fact, a standard CIA-style word trap. Moira said nothing. "Yeah, yer one popular lady. It's amazin' how skills can put ya in demand, ain't it?"

"I'm working on a cure for the Legacy virus," Moira agreed, carefully. The last time she'd seen Creed, it was on a monitor camera in the downstairs levels of the X-mansion, while he was chasing Psylocke. Psylocke had led him away from the medical center, knowing just how much of a chance a couple of unarmed Humans would stand. She tried to reconcile the images she'd seen that day with the man standing in front of her.

His mannerisms were the same, his face, but it was like the difference between an actor on stage, and the same actor giving an interview.

"Ain't that nice," Creed purred.

/Is he still just generally foul-tempered, or does he know something?/ MacTaggart wondered.

"Yer not 'recruitin' are you?"

"What?" Moira asked, puzzled.

"Legacy. I don't care WHAT Logan told you, you're exposin' him to that shit over my dead body," Creed promised, snapping the suitcase shut.

"Dear god, no. I didn't even ask. Wouldna his healing protect him anyway?"

"Yeah. It would."

Moira took that for what it was worth, and concluded two very important things. First, Creed had never been exposed to Legacy, and second, never get between these two.

* * *

"Hey, Moira," Logan poked his head out of the bathroom, and eyed a pile of clothes on the floor by the bed. Creed balled them up, and tossed them to him. Logan emerged a minute later, dressed.

"Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"Why's she here?" Creed asked, hooking a thumb in MacTaggart's direction.

"I told you over the phone. Moira's on vacation," Logan reminded him.

"So you're a tour guide now?"

"In a manner o' speakin'," Logan shrugged, "-I didn't plan on bein' thrown out of the X-Men on the same day, though."

"Ye say that like you're not goin' back..." Moira looked at Wolverine with concern.

"Oh," Logan paused, "-I get it. Forgot ta mention that part, did ya?" He looked at Creed pointedly.

"Figured ya had more self-respect," Creed shrugged unapologetically.

"What's he on about?" Moira asked Logan.

"Scott's just tryin' find out where I stand. 'At's all this is."  
"You're goin' BACK?" Creed bristled.

"Not right away. I got some stuff ta do," Wolverine explained.

Moira was scared. She'd known Sabretooth was grade-A head case, but the way Logan had said that last part sounded like whatever 'stuff' this was -couldn't- be done by a member of the X-Men. Creed and Logan both looked at her as if they'd heard her thoughts, and Moira nearly panicked outright before she remembered that Mutants of this type could literally smell her fear.

"It's okay, Moira," Logan ventured.

"I don't do babysittin'," Creed declared. He laced up his hiking boots, and left.

* * *

Moira dropped into a chair by the window, and Logan made her some coffee.

"Shot?" he asked, showing her a metal flask.

"Please."

He added it, and handed her the coffee.

"This didn't go the way I meant it to," Logan sighed, "-I had a camping trip planned. You don't still wanna go, do ya?"

Moira shook her head.

"Right," Logan drank from the flask.

"Where were you goin' to take me?" Moira asked, "-was there- -a place?"

"Yeah. A ranger station."

"OH."

"You know?" Logan asked.

"Kyle told me."

"Huh."

"What happened? If ye-"

"It's all right," Logan interrupted her, "-I was gonna tell ya when we got there. Ain't much of a story anyway."

"Go on."

"I'm on the run. I got Kyle with me. He's- I don't know- a week or two old?"

"In winter?" Moira asked.

"No, it was June."

"I thought the Hudsons found you on their honeymoon," Moira frowned.

"They did."

"But-"

"I went back," Logan explained.

"When?"

"Before I ever met the Hudsons. I escaped in winter, went back in summer, escaped again-"

"Why did you go back?"

"Look, I'm tryin' to tell a story here!" Logan snapped.

"-Sorry."

"Anyhow, I got Kyle with me, it's summer, an' on a good day, I can remember what a match is for. Kyle won't eat meat, an he don't like blood either. All my instincts are tellin' me ta kill 'im. A cub that don't eat, is gonna die anyway. But then I find this ranger station. There's a bowl on the back step that smells like milk, an' I start thinkin' straight for a second. Just a second, mind you. So I 'kill' 'im, but I do it by leavin' him on the steps o' the Human den ta get eaten. -Kinda tricked myself."

Moira swore softly.

"Hey, lady, it WORKED," Logan pointed out, defensively.

"Aye..."

"So, that's me," Logan spread his hands, "-whaddya think? Still say we're two peas in a pod?"

"No... But you need tae get your story straight," Moira informed him.

Logan gave her a very cold glance. He'd just shared something from the deepest recesses of his soul in an effort to help her, and she'd picked it apart with ruthless scientific efficiency.

And worse, she was right.

The sequence of events -didn't- add up, though the memories were clearer than they'd been in years. That meant something was still either wrong, or missing. Logan knew that Dr. James Hudson had been hip-deep in Canada's Mutant secrets since before there was a stable WORD for it. Maybe the missing time between leaving Kyle at the ranger station and being found in the Wintertime, had included Hudson's first attempt to recruit him. It made sense, though there wasn't really any evidence. If telling him that Weapon X had been tuning him up to better serve his country in 'The Flight' hadn't worked, why NOT just memory-wipe him, and arrange for him to be rescued by a beautiful and innocent woman who knew nothing of the Weapon X program, and just HAPPENED to be married to James Hudson?

Yeah, out in the middle of frozen North nowhere, he would run into the one guy in all of Canada scouting for a superhero group. That wasn't too fucking plausible in the first place, now that he thought about it out of context.

"You want a ride home?" Logan asked Moira.

"Thanks, but I'll stay. M'on vacation, remember?"

"Well..."

"Ah don't need a bodyguard, Logan," she told him, amused.

"The hell ya DON'T," Logan retorted, "-we still don't know what A.I.M. was after on Muir isle. Could be you, ya know?"

"Then I guess I'll have tae borrow Jean Gray," Moira decided.

"This town'll never recover," Logan smirked. He got his stuff, and Creed's.

"Ye don't want tae see her?" Moira asked.

"I don't do goodbyes well," Logan shrugged.

"Take care, then."

"You too, lady. Call Jean. I'll stick around until I see the jet," Logan told her, from the doorway.

"Logan?-"

"Yeah?"

"Didn't get a phone today, did ye?" Moira asked, impishly.

Logan slammed the door in her face.

* * *

Riding West against the wind, Logan crossed the border from Ontario into Manitoba. This was lake country, with uncountable ducks and geese, and long flat bridges. Town after town, kilometers of blacktop stretching out into the distance, marked by road signs in French and English. He loved it here. Thinkin' or not thinkin', the best place to do it was on the road. Creed hadn't come with him. He would have, but Logan hadn't asked. He needed time.

It was one thing to fight and win, and another to understand what that meant.

Logan knew that he would never get tired of -fighting- with Creed, but he couldn't beat the shit out of him like he'd done in North Bay on a regular basis. Creed was good for more than that, and so was he. To make this win stick, he would have to provide a vision. A clear idea, however random, of who and what he wanted them to BE, and a satellite office of the Xavier dream wasn't gonna cut it.

He had to make Creed WANT him to lead, or he'd be dealing with this horseshit forever.

Creed was good at making things happen. He was an excellent liar, and had a way of motivating people, even if they hated his guts. He was vindictive and unstoppable, loyal and patient. He was also an asshole. Creed borrowed his dreams from others, living out a string of B-movies and paperback spy thrillers, but he'd drop this without a second thought if something better came up. Getting his partner back had been 'something better' for quite some time.

Probably the reason he'd never gone back for Kyle.

But now that the masks and the gloves were off, Creed was down to using Logan as his ultimate challenge in the same way Logan was using Creed for a punching bag, and sooner or later, it would make them hate each other again.

No.

Not while there were so many nests of vipers that deserved their special talents more.

Hydra.

The Evil Empire.

The Weapon X project.

Every time Logan had gone after one, he'd found something of the others, and he'd finally realized what that meant.

It was time to go hunting.

-


	4. The Hunters

Title: To Whom it May Concern  
Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth  
Rating: R  
Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.  
Notes: Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be?'.  
Summary: During a raid on a Hydra lab, Team X discovers something that hits close to home.

* * *

Chapter 4: The Hunters

-

Creed stomped the snow off his boots, and hung up the long sheepskin coat he'd gotten at the Russian border-crossing in the entryway. He loved that coat. Like any true predator, Sabretooth had no problem taking the things he wanted. This house, for example. It was situated on the outskirts of Revelstoke B.C., on a property known affectionately to the locals as 'weedlot', since the former owner had illegally farmed cannabis. The house itself was recently built, with a playful eye for geometry, and lots of polished wood paneling that held secret compartments. Dead though it was in winter, Sabretooth figured he'd have to deal with the weed cropping up all over his yard again next spring, but the idea of calling the cops to come mow his grass was perversely appealing.

Creed met Logan on the way in from the garage. Logan hadn't shaved in about three days, and there was a new rip in the lower edge of his thermal shirt that hadn't been there this morning. His eyes were sharp and clear.

Creed brushed Logan's hip through his jeans with the backs of his claws as they passed.

Logan pressed his fingers against the inside of Creed's wrist in return.

Neither one mentioned it.

* * *

On the crest of the hill behind the house, Logan was practicing. He hadn't done katas in a long time, usually preferring to do his martial arts practice hands-on. One shape, one barefoot step into the snow after another, flowing together into a physical alphabet. Breath like a white paintbrush-stroke in the dark. The cold woke Logan up out here. Sometimes it seemed like he was trapped in one of those dreams where he woke up over and over, but never really moved.

He had it. That place between muscle fatigue and the point at which it healed, when his limbs just felt warm. It seemed colder outside as his own temperature kicked up, and as long as he kept moving, didn't give that last step a chance to fully repair itself before taking the next one...

There were a lot of things Wolverine was trying not to think about right now. Strangely, it wasn't working. Decades of memories were back there somewhere, and the more he found out about the past, the more connections snapped back together in his mind, and like a closed circuit, that just lit up deeper corners. He didn't WANT to think about this, and in truth, he'd never HAD to. That tattered photograph of Logan and Creed in Egypt from the file Nick Fury finally coughed up after Logan broke the Helicarrier's windshield, looked and smelled like it had been taken in the nineteen twenties, yet when they were both assigned to Team X after WW2, they'd met again as strangers.

Another reality began after Weapon X had finished souping them up, one in which they'd been enemies while off-duty. Department H had Logan's skills for day-to-day stuff, while the Weapon X controllers could bring him back to active status as an assassin with a few well-chosen keywords. He'd traded out Department H for the X-Men under his own steam, but the Weapon X keywords had remained intact until far, far later. There was a break between the nineteen thirties and the start of WW2, then another between escaping from Weapon X with Kyle and being found by the Hudsons. It was coming together...

There was just an awful LOT of it.

* * *

Logan smelled coffee, and followed it. Creed was sitting at the bar between the front room and the kitchen, thumbing through a magazine.

"Have fun?"

"Just keepin' in practice," Logan shrugged.

"Ya know, for your line o' work, I thought you'd be taller," Creed quipped.

"That's what they said in Rio," Logan told him.

"I heard about that. What were you doin' working as a bouncer anyway?" Creed asked.

"Long story." Logan got himself some coffee. The snow flakes caught on his hair and pants were starting to melt. "What's yer excuse? Couldn' sleep or wanted ta cross off a 'Road House' fantasy?"

"The first one, but that's a damn good idea," Creed said, brightening.

"Nah," Logan decided. -The hero ripped the villain's throat out in that movie, and Logan's thoughts in the snow earlier had left him with a sense of peace that he didn't want to throw away just yet.

"Whassamatter, Mijo?" Creed asked, dropping into character as Wade. He didn't look the part, but he had the loose-limbed slouch, the sleepy-eyed sidelong glance, and the amused quirk of a smile down cold. Wade wasn't the villain, in fact he was the hero's friend and former mentor. Interesting choice.

Logan could deal with that.

"Another town, same story..." Logan began, as Dalton.

"Whatever happened with that Summers fella? I heard 'e gave ya the boot!"

"The joint was gettin' a little too classy for the likes o' me," Logan shrugged. "You know how it is, first they take the chicken wire off the stage, and next thing ya know they're servin' wine coolers."

"Yeah, I hear you man. What have you got goin' now?" Creed asked.

"I hooked up with some Canadian outfit. Great place, but it's been a mess for years."

"You havin' trouble?"

"Nothin' I can't handle."

Creed looked at the wooden bar top speculatively.

"That there could use a polish. Place's locked up, ya know..."

"You are a dirty ol' man."

"Sticks an' stones, kid."

"You can't keep up with me anyway," Logan purred.

"Oh, we'll just have ta see about that..." Creed said, snagging the waistband of Logan's pants with a finger.

* * *

"Hey, wha'd you do with that file you told me about?" Logan called up the stairs, frowning at the computer screen in front of him.

"Which one?" Sabretooth called back.

"Kyle's."

Sabretooth came down into the basement, and glanced over Logan's shoulder at the screen before replying.

"It's in a safe place. Why?"

"Didn't keep a copy, did ya?" Logan asked.

"No."

"Any names?"

"Nobody alive. Oh, except tha head o' the project, but if his real name was 'Dr. Dearborn', then mine's 'Pussy Galore'," Creed snorted.

"Ya think 'Victor Creed' is subtle?" Logan teased.

"Took you long enough," Creed purred.

"I haven't called you Victor in months," Logan pointed out.

"Why call me Creed then?"

"You've used that one longer."

"It's still not my real name."

"Whaddya -want- me t'call you?" Logan asked.

"How does 'Master' sound?"

"Not a chance in hell."

* * *

"I think ol' saint Nick is onto us."

Even from a few feet away, Wolverine couldn't see much of Sabretooth's expression through the snowfall except for the shadow under his tac helmet, the end of his chin, and the snow caught in his eyebrows. This was a good snow, deep, powdery and so light that it blew over to erase their footsteps within minutes of their passing.

"You mean what with him givin' us a mission in North B.C. instead of halfway 'round the world?"

"Yeah, that," agreed Sabretooth.

"He could be tossin' out chum ta see if we bite," Logan reasoned, "-make us think about goin' after these guys on our own?"

"-Or we could be the chum..." Creed countered practically, "-hey Maverick! Whaddya think? Are we the bait on this one?"

Maverick looked up.

"I think the guys in green pajamas will be unlikely to care," Last in the line and nearly twelve feet away, Maverick was a ghost holding a gray rifle. It was too dark to see anything with just his eyes, and night vision goggles were useless in this whiteout, so he was navigating by infa-red. All he could see was two faint red blobs in front of him, the static of his own warm breath, and dead cold everywhere else. He was mostly keeping pace by ear. Wildchild was sitting this one out.

Up ahead, Wolverine heard the sound of a snowplow engine starting up. Good luck keeping the road from here to Ft. Nelson open, but somebody was out there was trying. Maybe they had a helipad to keep clear. That made more sense. He signaled to the others to stop, and snuck up the back side of the ridge ahead.

...#&)#).

The target sounded big, with lots of high, hard, slanted walls. Logan heard guards, the tell-tale clink of rifle-sling fittings, boots stamping restlessly in the snow, and the bored hum of stale conversation that was still better than the empty sound of the white-choked wind. Twenty, minimum. Probably more around the sides and rear of the structure. On the plus side, these guys probably hadn't had to deal with anything more dangerous than a wandering bear in months.

Stealth was of the essence here. Wolverine went back to where he'd left the others, and told them his plan. They set off.

* * *

"-So we could drive down to Jasper and see my wife's parents for Christmas, but I told you how that always goes, and I've been wanting to see my cousin Gordon, you remember I told you about him, right? Works a rig in the gulf of Alaska, but whenever he's home, he's got some of the best fishing in the world off his back porch. Lives up on the coast up by Juneau, ya know?"

"Uh-huh."

"So I says to Becky-"

"What was that?"

"What?"

"Looked like one of them bigfoots."

"I don't see nothin. I -told- you not to wear contact lenses on duty out here. They'll freeze to your eyeballs, and then where'll you be? Up shit creek, that's where."

"Maybe you're right. Only saw it for a moment, like one of those fake-water things in the desert."

"Mirage."

"Yeah, those."

* * *

Up on the roof of the building, Sabretooth chipped the ice away from a maintenance door, and checked the thing for traps. There was a lock that Logan had no trouble with, and one alarm, rigged to an electrical sensor that went off if the circuit was broken. Creed jammed the ends of a long piece of stiff copper wire behind each of the contact plates, and opened the door. A silent gust of heat from inside rose out of the stairwell to meet them.

"Let's go," Wolverine nodded.

"Remember, we're not here to trash the place, just to get enough out of the computers for SHIELD to issue a warrant," Maverick reminded them.

"Yeah, right," Creed snorted, peering around the next corner eagerly.

"SHIELD needs ta bag something in broad daylight," Logan explained, "-this is a P.R. stunt. We're the prep team, an' the young bucks get to be on TV."

"Something like that," Maverick shrugged.

"Why is it we always get briefed when we're halfway ta the mission site already?" Creed bitched, "-just once, I'd like ta get the lowdown BEFORE I get on the bandwagon."

"You're in the wrong line of work," Maverick snapped.

"In case ya haven't noticed schnitzel-boy, this AIN'T my regular line o' work."

"Sshh!" Wolverine hissed. Maverick and Sabretooth stopped. Wolverine listened. "You hear that?"

"Sounds like a dog kennel, don't it?" Creed whispered.

"No. Not dogs," Logan whispered back.

"...Maybe the Hunter-in-Darkness fucked some huskies?" Creed theorized.

"It does sound like him, but... not exactly."

"Wanna go check it out?"

"Now wait a second," Maverick interrupted, "-the mission is to pick the lab computer's brains, not make off with the lab rats!"

He was met by two exceedingly cold glares.

"Oh, for- -come on you guys, I didn't mean YOU. Most things that have been experimented on by groups like this don't bounce back, and you know it. If there's anything that can be rescued, you'll be able to meet it when the SHIELD regulars take this place tomorrow. If you break them out now, there's a couple dozen guys with guns outside. YOU'LL make it, but the research subjects won't."

Logan and Creed exchanged glances. Maverick was right. Still...

"I got the camera," Creed offered.

"Go," Logan nodded, "-but don't BE there, understand?"

Creed smiled with a quick flash of teeth, and vanished down the corridor.

Logan looked back at Maverick.

"You got somethin' to say?" He challenged.

"I guess not," Maverick observed, dryly.

"Not in the middle of a mission, ya don't."

"Now where have I heard that before..." Maverick muttered, under his breath.

"The computer's up to us now. Let's get moving."

* * *

The computer terminal they were going for was two levels up, on a floor with a wide green paint stripe running along the wall at waist level. Maverick snipped some of the wires running parallel to this stripe at ground level, with a set of odd-looking cutters from one of his belt pouches. They were shaped like rat teeth. There was even a compartment in the handle that contained rat turds to complete the illusion. He made a number of peripheral marks in the black rubber of the cable insulation before cutting all the way through. The security cameras stopped pivoting.

Wolverine heard footsteps, and they ducked into a nearby stairwell. Through a tiny gap in the door hinge, Maverick watched a pair of white-coated technicians walk by. They stepped onto the elevator. There was a sleepy exchange of 'Hail Hydra's with the two armed guards on the elevator, and another group of lab-coats got off. The elevator doors closed, and the noise of the lift started downwards.

Maverick and Wolverine waited until the coast was clear, then darted down the hallway following Maverick's map. The computer room was well staffed. Logan counted at least twelve people. They had to be barred from the room for a while, but they couldn't know why. If he'd brought a leaf from Creed's yard and burned it under a smoke detector, that would have done nicely. A little fire alarm, a little bickering about who would lose his job for smoking pot in a secure facility, and the place would have been cleared out for at least an hour.

/Note to self.../

"Sleep gas?" suggested Maverick.

"Close," said Logan thoughtfully, "-you got any stink-bombs?"

"One, but wouldn't that be a little like spray painting outsiders-were-here on the wall?"

"With all these bored guards around?" Logan smirked, "-they'll get the blame fer sure."

"Second-grade special, coming up," agreed Maverick. Maverick hid in a dark office down the hall, and gave Wolverine a small sealed glass vial containing a viscous amber liquid. Wolverine rolled up his sleeve and took off his glove so that the technicians couldn't see that he was wearing black instead of green, and lobbed the vial into the computer room. Then he ran like hell for the office, and only just made it in ahead of the first technician's coughing and gagging escape from the computer room.

/Ugh. I forgot how bad that stuff smells/ thought Logan.

Wait. Some of the Hydra guards wore masks, didn't they?

"Umm... You got anything slippery?" Logan asked, looking at the long hallway that led up to the computer room.

"No. Do you?" Maverick said, keeping his voice absolutely level.

"Get started on the download. I'll handle the 'hall monitors'," Logan decided, handing Maverick his rifle, and disappearing into a nearby men's room.

Maverick decided two things. First, this was going to be spectacular, and second, he wanted no part of it. He snapped his gas mask into place across the bottom half of his helmet, and walked into the computer room.

* * *

Logan found the janitor's locker behind the door. He took the dark green coveralls hanging up next to it, and put them on over the rest of his gear. The only thing showing outside the coveralls was the ski mask from his winter gear, totally hiding his head and face. Now then... bleach. That was slippery. Ammonia. No good, that would go toxic if it mixed with the bleach. Hand soap. Mops and a bucket. Paper towels. Windex. 409. Urinal cake. Scrub brushes. Sponges. An old filthy rag in one corner that looked capable of moving under it's own power.

Logan sloshed the bleach down the hallway from the computer room door to the elevator, and partway down in the opposite direction. Logan used the pale blue hand soap gel to write a few unkind things about the pedigree and sexual habits of several high-ranking Hydra overlords on the walls... one of which was actually true... and then flooded the sink and toilet with paper towels. This spread the bleach further down the hall. It was more or less at that point that the elevator opened.

"What in blazes?!" the guard in charge demanded, staring down the inundated hallway.

Logan stayed in the john.

There were a few wet foot steps, a loud splat, some swearing, and the sound of someone talking on a radio. That was a good idea.

"Maverick, how are you doin' in there?" Logan said, keying his own radio.

"Two more minutes," Maverick answered back indistinctly.

"Copy. Be ready to move the second you're done."

Maverick clicked the radio once.

Logan peeked out of the door to the men's room, and was immediately spotted by one of the enraged guards. Logan waited until the patrol had floundered it's way about halfway to the computer room, and then hit them en-masse with the mop bucket. They hit the floor like bowling pins, and Wolverine came at them head-on as he saw the last of their rifles hit the water. He'd pushed off of the doorjamb, and slid across the floor like a hockey player on ice. He used one of the guards as a stepping stone, then pushed off of one wall to get the rest of the way to the elevator. Once there, he engaged the elevator's emergency stop, and hit the 'door close' button. The stairs were was now the only way on or off of the floor, and the lower stairs would be covered with bleach-water by now.

Logan looked over his shoulder at the guards.

Oh yeah. Those guys looked mad. One of them could even skate halfway decently, so he had to get moving NOW. Wolverine shoved off the wall by the elevator, and down the hallway in the opposite direction from the computer room.

* * *

Creed had seen some sick shit in his life, but storage room 225 was firmly in the top fifty. It reminded him of a restaurant he'd gone to once in Southeast Asia. He hadn't actually -seen- the dish prepared, but he'd heard the yelp of a dog and then the sounds of something having it's throat cut, followed by a lot of wet sounds, and the scent of blood and amniotic fluid. The main dish, of course, had been 'young dog'.

Tastiest damn thing he'd eaten in years, but not the kind of meal you wanted to be able to see OR hear being prepared. The room he was in now had what looked like a dead puppy collection. There were hundreds of the things, packed into clear jars of formaldehyde in various stages of development. Some were very canine-looking, while others looked more monky-ish. One was clearly human, though twisted up like a rotten fruit. Creed made sure to get a picture of that one. The scent was really nasty in here.

Creed snuck deeper into the laboratory, following the sound of the barking and howls.

He'd been right. Most of the things in the cages resembled the wolfish hunter-in-darkness.

Sabretooth had fought that thing once, high above times square, of all places. Logan had of course made friends with it as if the beast was a stray dog. Stray dog from HELL, that fucker walked -upright-. The animals in the cages weren't as big as the hunter, but they seemed to be the same species. Shorter muzzles though. Pups, or genetic manipulation? No way to tell. Creed took pictures of the kennel room, being sure to show a clear headcount, and get a full-body shot of one of them.

He caught another scent, one that told him for certain these were pups.

A female. The hunter-in-darkness had been a buck, but this scent was female. Smelled pretty good too, now that he-

/WHAT am I DOING?/ Sabretooth blinked, stopping halfway across the kennel room.

A pimply-faced lab tech came in to see what all the barking was about, and Creed dived under the steel table in the center of the room. The tech swore at the pups for a while, then went away.

Creed snuck out from under the table. The pups renewed their barking. Creed put his face near one of the cages, and sniffed the occupant, giving it a closer whiff of his scent as well. The pup put it's nose to the bars of the cage, and looked him in the eyes briefly, sniffing.

Then it whined, and looked away. Creed reached through the bars, and scratched it behind the ears. It whined some more, and the rest of the pups started to calm down.

Cages.

This was disgusting. This was why he didn't trust Humans. ...This was an opportunity.

First he had to make sure of something, though.

Creed swiped the pup's nose with his claws, leaving two deep parallel cuts. It yipped in alarm, and Creed pulled his hand back quickly. Snarling menace, the pup snapped at Creed through the bars. The cuts across it's nose showed no sign of sealing shut.

"Heh heh- -down Kujo. Ya passed."

* * *

When Sabretooth caught up to Maverick and Wolverine in the upper level, Wolverine was wet and smelled like bleach, Maverick smelled pungently of rotten eggs, and there was a thundering of boots on the stairs above them, in hot pursuit.

"What am I gonna do with you two?" Creed scolded, grinning.

"Run," Logan advised.

They did. It was a lot easier to avoid being seen altogether than to actually throw off pursuit, but they finally managed it, squeezing into a ventilation duct on the fourth floor. The guards dashed around the corner just after Maverick slapped the grate back in place, and nobody breathed for about a minute.

"You wanna get yer elbow outta my liver?" Logan suggested, when all was quiet.

Creed licked the side of Logan's face behind Maverick's back, just because he could.

Logan growled at him.

Maverick re-secured the grate so he could let go without having it fall off, and looked back at the others. Silence, and a glare facing a grin. He'd just missed something.

"Get. offame," Wolverine snarled.

"What's yer hurry?" Creed purred.

/They have GOT to be kidding.../ Maverick thought, unhappily.

"Do ya know where my fist is?" Logan asked.

"Yes."

"Do ya know where my claws'll be in about -one- -second-?"

"Do it and I'll scream."

"Probably."

"Okay, okay..." Creed laughed, letting Logan up and moving further down the tunnel.

* * *

They escaped through a side door unseen, and hid behind a parked sno-cat. The snow was still coming down hard and fast, but there were searchlights cutting through it in all directions. They wouldn't be able to slip through the perimeter without a distraction. Logan took off the green coveralls and his ski-mask, and everybody stuffed them with snow. The dummy was lashed to the sno-cat with some rope, and Creed rigged the throttles. They hit the deck as the decoy started off, then ran like hell for the tree line.

They made it.

The Ft. Nelson Mounties had never seen so much hardware in their lives. SHIELD troops were all over the vehicle impound Quonset hut, loading up, checking each other's gear, and being briefed on the facility they were about to hit.

Three strangers walked in unannounced, wearing white parkas and tac helmets. One of the taller two demanded coffee loudly. Nick Fury nodded to a soldier standing around nearby, who went and fetched some. Out of their cold-weather gear, the three were dressed in black fatigue pants, black turtleneck sweaters with wear patches over the shoulders and elbows, and web gear harnesses with a lot of weapons and equipment pouches. No nametapes, flags, or unit patches anywhere.

"What have you got?" Col. Fury demanded. Maverick handed him a pair of unmarked white zip-disks.

"Is it good enough?"

"More," Maverick promised. Fury handed the disks to one of his aides, "-whatever it is, wire it to New York. I want a warrant within the hour."

"Here you go," the soldier had returned with three cups of coffee.

"'Bout time," Creed snapped, taking one.

"Got any sugar?" asked Maverick.

"I can ask the Mounties. Um. Sir."

"Ya do that," said Creed.

"What did I just send to New York?" Fury asked.

"See for yourself," Creed handed him the camera, with the preview screen open to a shot of the puppies-in-jars room.

"Christ in traction..." Fury muttered, clicking forward through the whole set, "-good work, you crazy sons-of-bitches. Did they see you?"

"They know they've been fucked with, but we set it up to look like one of their own guys pulling a prank," Logan said, noncommittally, "-they'll be on guard, but they've probably been up all night being yelled at by their commanders."

"Huh. Better than nothing, I suppose," Fury decided, "-go change. Those uniforms smell like a Saigon shithouse," Fury looked at Maverick critically, "-especially yours."

Maverick sighed.

Logan caught up to Maverick later in the break room of the Mounties' station. The chatter of the TV had been turned down. Empty paper cups, briefing papers, and half-eaten snacks littered every available table surface, but the SHIELD officers were gone. Maverick snagged a donut and some orange juice, then dropped onto the couch.

"Hi."

"Hey, Logan."

"You up fer a few drinks? There's a bar down the street," Logan pointed in the appropriate direction with his cigar, "-an' first round's on me."

"Some other time," Maverick sounded tired.

"Right. Well, if ya change your mind, that's where I'll be."

"...Thanks."

* * *

When the SHIELD helicopters came back that night, they brought captives, and several prison-modified passenger planes had to be flown West from New York to deal them all. And then there was the animals. SHIELD had cages for transporting highly trained German Shepard police dogs. The Hunter-in-Darkness pups from the lab hadn't gone quietly, and as soon as the first of the cages arrived by helicopter at the Ft. Nelson airport, Logan knew the handlers had no idea what they were dealing with.

Logan grabbed the arm of the sergeant in charge of the handler team, and dragged him off to one side.

"What do you know about these critters?" Wolverine demanded.

"Who are you?"

"You wanna go ask Colonel Fury?" Logan shot back.

"They're lab animals from the bust," the sergeant shrugged. "-Some kind of wolf. My orders are to treat 'em like the Queen's own Corgis, and load them onto a plane that lands in four hours."

"Okay. That explains it. They didn't brief you."

Logan took one of the cages by the outside handles, and turned it upright carefully. The snarling pup inside stood up stiffly, and growled at him face-to-face. Logan looked back at it steadily. The pup stopped growling after a long moment, and sniffed him curiously, furry paws curling around the front bars of the cage like fingers. The Hunters-in-Darkness were wolves, and yet they weren't. The handler watched in shock. Logan reached through the bars of the cage, and rubbed the top of the pup's muzzle. It let him.

"Can that thing talk?" the handler asked, finally.

"Don't rightly know," Logan admitted, "-how about it, pup? Can you talk Human?"

The pup whined, and looked down. That was a no. -But it seemed to have understood the question.

"No, he can't," Logan told the handler, "-I want these guys off the ramp. The noise from the choppers is spookin' 'em crazy. It's freezing out here too. These may look full grown, but these are -pups-, and they've never been outside a BUILDING. Find a-" Logan stopped, and swore, "-never mind. Get 'em off the ramp. I'll be back in a minute."

He barged in on Fury giving orders to a pair of captains.

"Nick, we gotta talk."

Fury looked at him for a moment, spoke to the Captains for a minute longer, then turned to Logan.

"What is it?"

"Where are the Hunter-in-Darkness pups going?"

"Can't tell you that," said Fury.

"Like HELL you can't."

"You're going to give me a hard time on this, aren't you," Fury observed.

"Don't do this, Nick." Logan warned, "-they've been through enough."

"You, or the animals?"

"You of ALL PEOPLE!!" Logan yelled.

"Listen up, Logan, an' listen good," Fury bit off, "-you are gonna shut up and color. You are gonna do it right fucking NOW, and you are gonna do it because you know exactly what kind of bastard I am. Are we CLEAR?"

"...Yeah." Logan understood. Nick Fury was a tricky, conniving, DEVIOUS bastard. And right now that meant whatever Fury had planned for the Hunters-in-Darkness, it wasn't what his superiors had in mind. Logan understood, all right.

"Good," Fury shielded his lighter from the wind between the hood of his jacket and one cupped hand, and lit up.

"I told the handler ta move 'em off the ramp," Logan added, "-the pups're terrified, but if ya get 'em someplace warm and quiet now, ya might not lose any. It's minus twelve on the mercury, Nick."

"Do it," Fury agreed, "-but remember they've got to be moved again in three or four hours."

"Right."

The best that could be found on short notice was a small maintenance hanger. It was still chilly, but with a few area heaters it became just enough. All told, there were eighteen cages. The second largest had a longer muzzle than the others, proportionally smaller feet and forepaws, and her deep yellow eyes watched the handlers with carefully nurtured murderous intent. This was mom, Logan judged.

When a SHIELD soldier came in later to say that the transport plane was on the ground, Wolverine felt like screaming. He -had- to sit tight because Nick said he had a plan.

He -had- to jump in and pull a rescue.

He stayed to see that all the cages were loaded onto the same plane, and waited until the plane took off into the night, standing beside the empty hanger like a dead bird frozen to a twig.

* * *

Logan felt a hand on his shoulder. A quick squeeze, with claws.

"Where the hell have YOU been?" Logan growled.

"Watchin' from the terminal. Figured I'd skip the bunny-hugger rhetoric," Creed shrugged.

"...Get away from me."

"They're weak, Logan. Let 'em go."

"Shut up."

"What were you gonna do? Call Scotty an' friends? Oh yeah, I'm SURE those pups'll paper-train," Creed snorted, "-maybe take 'em home with us instead, see how long they can go without snackin' on-"

"SHUT UP!" Logan snarled.

"No. Yer confused. These things ain't our kind, an' you don't own 'em."

"Real convenient, bub. It's none o' yer business until it's YOU, huh? Where have I heard THAT logic before?"

"Yer thinkin' like prey, shorty. Are you prey?" Sabretooth asked.

"I'm gonna find out where those pups went," Wolverine decided, "-an' then maybe I'll come back."

"That easy, huh?" Creed grabbed Logan by his head, one hand on either side of his face, and kissed him on the mouth. It wasn't a nice kiss. Creed's lip got cut on some teeth, and Logan shoved Creed's arms away from him angrily.

Creed punched him square in the face. He hadn't pulled that a bit, and Wolverine landed deep in a snow bank six feet away. Creed pounced on him. Logan pounced back though, shoving Creed to the side and pinning him there momentarily by a hand on his throat and a fist in his hair. Creed yanked Logan's hand off his neck, and then Logan bit Creed's right ear off.

"GRRreeeaaahhh!" Creed grabbed a double-handful of Logan's parka, and threw him backhand into a nearby snowdrift.

They got up, dusted themselves off, and eyed each other warily. Creed scooped up some snow in his hands, and held it against his head while his ear grew back. Logan re-set his nose with a muttered curse, then took the ear out of his mouth, inspected it, and put it in his pocket.

"I'll be wantin' that back," Creed stated.

"I figured," Logan nodded.

"See ya 'round then."

"Yup."

* * *

Logan searched for the better part of a month before any clue turned up. Fury hadn't told him where the Hunters-in-Darkness were, but had instead given him some cryptic bullshit about finding their native habitat.

In the convenience store of a remote gas station in Northern Alberta, there was a display of local First Nations tribal art up near the counter. Most of it was the usual tourist-bait, but there were a few good bone-handled knives, and one magnificent dream catcher. The leather wrapping around the outside hoop was caribou rawhide, and Logan caught the scent he'd been looking for. The Hunters-in-Darkness had bagged that caribou, or at least they'd chewed on it for a while. The dream catcher had been made by Humans, who were on good enough terms with the pups to share kills with them. He understood now. Native habitat. Right.

"Hey you! What are you doing?" The clerk asked, getting impatient with the hairy little biker dude sniffing his sales display.

"Just passin' through," Logan told him.

-


	5. Buried

Title: To Whom it May Concern

Chapter 5: Buried

Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth

Rating: NC-17/M

Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.

Notes: Established relationship story. Sequel to 'How's it Gonna Be?'.

Summary: As winter freezes everything else, memories finally start to come loose.

* * *

Chapter 5: Buried

-

/"-After gathering information on..." The coolly beautiful woman's voice became indistinct for a moment, "...all research subjects will return to ME, Utah..."/

Logan woke up abruptly. He'd slept in a woodshed. Morning sunlight from the room's high, single window lit a spider web stretched across the flat, unfinished ceiling boards. Logan's breath was white, and stirred up the fine sawdust on the floor as he got his breathing back under control. THAT dream had been real.

/Utah?

M.E. like Maine, or me, meaning her ?

Information on what?/

Logan sat up stiffly, and rubbed his face with his hands.

He wanted to talk to Creed about this. ...Logan paused. He'd become so used to working in a vacuum as far as people with whom he could compare notes were concerned, that the thought caught him by surprise. He wasn't going to act on it, but just that he COULD...

"Too !#(&# early fer this..." Logan muttered.

In the next town, he stopped at a public library and looked through some maps. There wasn't any town in Maine called Utah, but for what it was worth, 'Barrington' could be found about eight miles South of Providence, Rhode Island. -Cerebro had coughed up that name for him once, but he'd never actually found it. Providence. Huh.

Something else on the map caught his eye.

The closest thing on the Rhode Island map to Barrington was Haines memorial state park. Kind of the way the town of Haines Junction was the closest thing to Mt. Logan up in the Yukon. That HAD to be a coincidence, didn't it? That mousy little secretary of Dr. Cornelius's had spelled her name 'Hines' anyway. There was a fair-sized town called Logan in North Utah up by Wyoming.

/Aww, gimmie a break. They wouldn't build the code-names of an organization like Weapon X around my name. Now Utah, that's something I haven't seen before. M.E. Utah. Who do I know that would call herself Utah, or use that as a base? ...I think I liked it better when they were all hidin' up here in Canada./

Nick Fury wouldn't lie, but he wouldn't level either.

Xavier wouldn't play ball for any reason. Though he'd agreed to help Wolverine get his memories back, he'd never shown any interest in actually doing so. The one time X had reluctantly gone into Logan's head, all he'd found was Psi-Borg's spike-tree dreamscape, and the fanged tree nursing the radiators. If Chuck was supposed ta be the best telepath in the whole flamin' world, why hadn't he been able to get past that illusion?

Could he have seen past the thorns, but been so disgusted with the life Logan had lost that he had left the illusion in place? Xavier wouldn't... Would he? WOULD he have hidden something like a man's entire life to keep from losing an X-Man?

/I've asked m'self that question before.

"I can feel it happenin'. Every day, I feel myself revertin' to the head case I was before I joined this outfit. Findin' out half my memories might be bogus was the last straw. Was I a spy? A samurai? Or just a sawed-off psycho-killer with Adamantium claws?"

"Maybe all those things and more," Xavier had replied. "-But that was your past. Today, you are an X-Man. Surely that must count... for something?"/

The way the professor had phrased that had bothered Logan at the time, and he hadn't known why, but he'd answered the question anyway.

/"In lieu of a real life, Chuck-- it'll have to do."

Tellin' a telepath I'll only help 'im until HE helps ME. Yeah. Way ta motivate the man. That's &#)& brilliance./

Really, though, Wolverine didn't want to believe that Professor X would have left him in the dark on purpose. It could be that Psi-Borg WAS better, or at least better at handling violent and disturbing imagery than the professor was. Chuck had trained to be a missionary, after all...

Logan went out to where he'd parked his bike, and took a small leather bag out of his pocket. The grains of salt inside shifted a little as he untied the lacing. The bag contained Creed's ear, dry and stiff as rawhide. He'd taken that as a promise to be back, and Creed had let him go. Logan touched the rough edge of the clean bite that had separated the ear from Creed's head. Sabretooth would always want this back, even though a new ear had grown in it's place within minutes. It was a piece of him.

* * *

Logan didn't trust cell phones. He'd whiled away far too many happy hours in the X-jet's hanger with Jubilee, picking up cell phone frequencies on the aircraft radio. Jube was the worst non-telepathic eves-dropper in the mansion, next to himself, of course. For the most part the calls were just people going about their lives, but occasionally they had picked up a criminal deal, an argument, or phone sex. The latter had always made Jubliee laugh, and Logan figured it was secretly on her list of things to try when she had a significant other. Maybe she had, by now. Once, just ONCE, they had picked up a couple of supervillans talking. The Kingpin had been trying to buy information about the Avengers from Doctor Doom, but Doom's asking price had been Princess Python. He wanted to turn her and her snake into a golden statue for his collection. Kingpin backed out of the deal, because he didn't want to lose his cut of the Ringmaster's takings.

Cell phones were wicked bad news, from a security standpoint.

It would just get trashed in the next fight anyway.

Still, if Team X went on a mission without him because they simply couldn't -FIND- him, Wolverine would never live it down. -To say nothing of the fact that Team X wasn't SET UP to go on missions without him in the first place...

/#(!&-#(./

Okay, maybe it WAS time to get one.

Wolverine did this. It took him the better part of the morning, because he had the salesman speak at normal speed, and translate the malicious nest of brochures into plain English.

The first person he called was Kyle.

"Hello?"

"Hey, kid. How you doin'?"

"I'm good. I'm down in Roswell."

"Uh..."

"The Quentin Carnival's winter route runs through here," Kyle laughed.

"I know who runs that outfit. He teachin' you any tricks on my scoot?"

"Well..." Kyle began.

"How bad?" Logan asked, calmly.

"Back fender, back tire, and both brake lights. -I'm getting it fixed." Kyle added, quickly.

"Uh-huh," Logan said, dubiously.

"The Harleys are good bikes for the road, but they're a lot heavier than the stunt bikes I'm used to, an' it's taking me a while to adjust," Kyle explained.

"Yer sayin' you don't like hogs," Logan translated.

"Um, yeah."

"Heathen. Trade it."

"Really?"

"Yep. Remember though, not all of 'em are street legal in the 'states like they are up here."

"I know. -Sounds like you're still in Canada. Has anything interesting happened?"

"One business trip. You didn't miss much."

"Why didn't anybody call me?" Kyle asked, sounding hurt.

"Nothin' personal, kid. The roster's tradin' off between you and the German."

"Huh. So is this a full-time job or not?"

"Yes. Yer always on standby, but ya won't get called up every time."

"I don't get it. Most of the other teams-"

"We ain't the other teams," Logan cut him off, "An' we're also gonna have a serious chat about the difference between a cell phone an' a land line."

"Sorry."

"YOU didn't use any names," Logan pointed out, "-yer dad, on the other hand... that reminds me. Got a pen?"

"No, but I got dirt. How long is the message?"

"My phone number."

"Oh. Cool," /-About time/ thought Kyle. Logan gave him the number.

"When are you comin' up this winter?" Logan asked.

"November. -Where's home this week?"

"Call me from Calgary, wiseass."

* * *

Motorbike season was, and arguably HAD been, officially over. Logan got off at the end of the snowplowed road, and pushed the bike up the long drive up to the house. One more foot of snow on the ground, and he would have had to carry the damn thing. Weedlot, with it's long sloped roof, flat ridge, and the dome on one corner, looked like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. It wasn't home, but it was trying to be. There were no fresh tracks around the door, and the chimney was silent. Logan wondered why. He left the bike by the garage door, and checked the outside of the house over thoroughly. No sign of forced entry beyond the marks on the door from the police breaking in on the pot farmer that Autumn, and the security systems were still in place. Logan kicked the snow away from the base of the garage door, and opened it to push the bike inside. This accomplished, he looked around further. The house was quiet, and colder than usual. There was a single steak knife sitting incongruously on the bar between the kitchen and the living room. Some of Creed's clothes were gone, as was his costume. A sniper rifle was gone out of the armory in the basement, too. Logan switched the thermostat back up to normal, pulled off his boots, got a beer from the fridge, and lay on the carpet in the middle of the living room like a throw rug.

Yup.

Sabretooth was off killin' somebody.

And Logan could do one of several things with that. He could leave. He could pretend it never happened. He could punish Creed when he got back. He could let it go in the same way that Creed would have to let it go if he decided to re-join the X-Men. He could find out who the target was, and -then- decide what to do. ...And Creed had better not have done this in retaliation for being left on his own.

Logan was tired. The truth was that as long as Creed's target was reasonably cancerous to society, he didn't actually care. He was supposed to, but he didn't.

If Creed had whacked one of the good guys, that would be a problem, but Logan didn't really think Creed was that stupid. He would see.

Until then, Logan was willing to trust him.

* * *

/Hel-lo there.../ Sabretooth thought, noticing Logan's cowboy boots across from the coat rack. The shower in the bathroom just off the entryway smelled faintly of elk blood, less than two days old. Creed supposed the shower had been added there so people could rinse off after being out in the mud farming pot or four-wheeling, but it had better uses. The steak knife was still on the bar untouched, surrounded by fresh scraps of notepaper with city names written on them, four empty beer bottles, and a dog-eared issue of 'Discover' with the title, 'Mind Control: Are we entering the brain-chip era?' on the cover. Upstairs, the door to Creed's bedroom was open a handsbreadth. Logan was there, asleep on his back with one arm curled up over his head.

A challenge, or an invitation? On the plane home from Atlanta, Creed had decided the first thing he'd say to Logan when the latter finally came back would be, 'Where's my ear?' It had been a good plan, but he hadn't thought Logan would make it home before him, and he doubly hadn't expected to be able to sneak up this close unnoticed. Creed pushed the door open a little more.

Ka-Clink! Roll, roll, roll...

/DAMN him./ Sabretooth came in and picked up the beer bottle that Logan had set up against the door as an alarm. Logan looked over at him, amused.

"You'll get yours," Creed promised, weighing the bottle in hand.

"Ya sleep on the plane?" Logan asked.

"No."

"That's too bad."

"Aren't you gonna ask who I killed first?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"'Cause yer old enough ta know the rules," Logan told him.

/I am at that/ Creed thought.

He set the bottle down on the first flat surface that came to hand, and Logan met him halfway, kneeling on the edge of the bed. He was naked, and even through the fabric of Creed's clothes, his skin felt warm. It wasn't a point of contact, it was a direction. Everything in front of him was Logan. Sleepy, tightly-fitted muscles and cat-in-the-sun smile. Creed's claws flexed against the skin of Logan's back, and he held the junction of neck and shoulder between his teeth for a while, eyes closed.

He could feel Logan's hands gripped against either side of his hips, thumbs stroking slowly along a nerve he couldn't remember the name of.

Hands that wanted him.

Creed's eyes flicked around the room jealously. Nothing moved, and no eyes lurked at the windows of the dome overhead. Creed picked Logan up with both hands, and set him on his shoulders backwards purposefully. Short, clever fingers curled around the back of Creed's head, and asked with a slight downward pull. Creed licked him a few times, teasing. Then he leaned forwards abruptly, catching Logan's back against his hands, and swallowing him nearly to the base before Logan had time to un-freeze from the near-fall. Logan gave a choked shout, and tightened his legs around Creed's shoulders reflexively, fisting his hands in Creed's hair. Creed held him like that, suspended flat in the air about two feet above the bed just because he COULD, and continued the blowjob mercilessly.

Having sex from halfway-upside down and backwards was a ragged edge of fear, pleasure, and frustration. Logan swore a lot, and wasn't too coherent about it. His skin was burning where Creed's hands and mouth were, and cold everywhere else, and he was getting dizzy from being upside-down half the time, but he wasn't about call a halt.

Logan came in bad Canadian English, something about a fishhook and dumping Creed's body under the ice of a frozen river that Creed didn't take personally.

Creed let all but the very end of Logan's piece out of his mouth, and then suddenly dropped him on the bed. -Near miss.

"GYAH! SHIT! ...Hooo... wow... You're so dead..."

"Where's my ear?" Creed purred.

* * *

Creed's hands looked black against the light coming through the glass bricks in front of him. Cobalt, and green, and beer-glass amber. Fire-orange and crystal. The realtor had asked him if he wanted it replaced with something quieter. Yeah, right. He didn't DO quiet.

The wall was beautiful. Beads of warm water streaming down in front of him, sluicing over his hands through the spaces between his fingers, and falling on the shower floor in trickles from where it collected at his elbows. He'd come from Logan's hands once already, and watched a white handprint streak and vanish from the beaded surface of the multicolored glass. On his knees now, Creed wondered if he should be allowing this at all.

It had never been an even switch with him and Logan. Then again, Logan had never been as good a fighter as him before, let alone a better one. That made things okay, if he didn't think too hard about it. And GODDAMN it felt good...

Creed thought he knew how this went, but at the end Logan bit the back of Creed's neck, hard but not deeply, shocking both ends of his spinal cord at once. Creed screamed, and his vision blacked out for a second or two. Then he was lying on the floor of the shower, and Logan was kneeling beside him, running a hand over his hair.

"-You okay?"

"'Course. ...You?"

"Yeah."

"Wh-where'd ya learn that?"

"Made it up," Logan shrugged.

"...Figures."

* * *

"You wanna know who I killed yet?" Creed asked, over breakfast.

"Wh' not?" Wolverine agreed, around a mouthful of pancakes.

"It was a DEA contract. They'll never cop to it, o' course. Gave me the address of a warehouse, and said ta make an example."

"Have fun?"

"Oh, YEAH... Ever seen a man try an' stop a wound bleedin' with a handful o' Colombia's best?"

"That don't usually work out," Logan observed.

"Heh heh- -no kiddin'. You know that thing you can do with a clothesline, a boot, and somebody's small intestine?" Creed continued, happily.

"LOOK," Logan interrupted, pointing at Creed's chest with his fork, "-yer an assassin. You kill people. I get it. As long as ya remember not ta hunt out o' season, I'm good with that."

"'Out o' season'?" Creed echoed, "-you mean like the way Magneto says the X-Men are off-limits one week, an' next week he wants 'em pushin' up daisies?"

"Uh..."

"No, keep going. This is interesting. You see whether or not somebody's wanted by the police as whether they're in season ta HUNT?" Creed asked.

"That depends on WHY they're wanted by the police," Logan corrected.

"You mean whether or not you think what they've done is bad enough fer killin'? Does it have ta be murder or does rape count too? What do ya do if they've just poked an eye out? You a Hammurabi's code kinda guy?" -Creed was on a roll.

"Death ain't serial. It can't be. -You know that. Each kill HAS ta be different because each person is different."

"So you ARE deciding who ta kill all by yourself," Creed grinned, "-an' you're tellin' ME I have ta stay on the side of the Human laws. How is THAT fair?"

"If ya can't ride a bike, you get training wheels," Logan told him.

Creed stared for a moment.

"Who the HELL d'you think yer talkin' to?" he demanded, finally.

Logan smiled over the rim of his coffee cup, and said nothing.

* * *

Kyle handed Logan his yellow and white dirt bike from the back of the truck, and Logan set it down on the garage's cement floor. Kyle paused, backpack over one shoulder, and looked around. He smelled last year's weed, and motor oil, and pancake syrup.

"You comin' in or not?" Logan called back to him.

The kid was in good shape. He'd been from one end of the continent to the other since Logan had seen him last, but the main difference was still in his eyes, like maybe he'd figured out that life didn't always hinge on the next five minutes. Kyle had Creed's eyes, cool blue slits waiting for any excuse to narrow in anger or amusement.

"This place have a secret basement level?" Kyle joked.

"Yup."

"Really?"

"Just the armory," Logan shrugged, "-c'mon."

Creed beat him to the door from the other side. It was warmer through that doorway than it was in the garage. Kyle smelled wood smoke, food, and leather. Creed stood in the doorway, arms folded, blocking it.

"'Bout time you showed up," said Creed.

"Hey, dad," said Kyle. He didn't raise a hand and wave hello, and he didn't look away as soon as possible. -He waited a good five seconds before getting the floor's opinion. Creed took in the shaggy edge of Kyle's hair, the thin yellow braid tucked behind his left ear, and the shark tooth with the silver coin bent around it like taffy, which Kyle wore on a cord around his neck. Kyle's brown motorcycle jacket was fringed leather, Indian style, and his jeans had holes in the knees.

"Okay, you can come in," Creed grinned, uncrossing his arms and moving out of the way. Once Kyle was past him, Creed tried to shut the door in Logan's face, but Logan put a shoulder to the door quickly, and growled at Creed as he squeezed past.

Kyle looked around, curiosity temporarily overriding the food smells from the kitchen beside the garage door. The house was at war with itself. Clean-lined leather furniture against worn reddish brown carpet. Two steps down into the well of the living room from the rest of the house, carved out by a curved, almost random, edge. Big stone fireplace. Sleek black electronics. A paperback copy of 'Lost Horizon' on the couch, with a brown and white goose feather for a bookmark. Far to the right side of the living room was a wooden staircase. The ceiling sloped up so that the back half of the house had two stories, while the front half didn't.

"Catch!" Creed yelled.

Kyle turned just in time to catch something fist-sized and hard. /Dad wouldn't throw a hand grenade in his own house, would he? ...Yes, he WOULD./ Kyle slung the object back at Sabretooth in less than a second, not even glancing at it. The jam jar cracked against the palm of Creed's hand as he intercepted it.

"Heh," Creed inspected the jar, pleased, "-you gotta remember that one, boy."

"It had to be the strawberry..." Kyle fumed.

Over the next couple hours, Wildchild gave them his story. He talked about a girl who'd gotten him shot in Knoxville, about a rock band in Alabama, and the Quentin Carnival, run by John Blaze, the original Ghost Rider. He told them about a Navajo reservation town, and the way he'd noticed that a medicine wheel was about forty-five degrees off from being the circled Xavier 'X'. He talked about his dirt bike, and who he'd gotten it from, and he talked about lying on the smooth white roof of a camper outside of Flagstaff, with a thousand stars in the high desert sky, listening to coyotes sing. He told them about bending the coin around the shark tooth with his fingers, just to see if he could. And then he needed to crash very, very badly, and Creed told him which room was his upstairs, and which ones to stay out of or else.

* * *

Logan was playing with the steak knife on the bar-top again.

It was balanced so that it would spin from the center, and the rough, serrated edge wasn't nearly as sharp as the black handled knives in Logan's tac gear were. He tapped the point with one finger to get it moving, and stopped it after twice around. Then he tapped it again. Maybe it was having Kyle back, and maybe it was just the Winter in general, but the rest of the world seemed very far away.

Logan had started marking the locations of Hydra, E.E., and Weapon X facilities on a map. There weren't many yet, but already patterns were emerging, like all three of those organizations having had a presence in Ottawa.

Logan stopped the knife with one of his claws, and measured steel against bone. His claw beat the blade by almost half. Logan picked up the knife for a moment, and used it to shave off a rough snag on the side of his claw. He could snap the knife blade off with his claws, but if he used the serrated edge and didn't twist, the knife would probably work on his claws, too. Ugh. Having to re-grow them after battling Cyber was already one time too many. Deep snow packing in all around the doors and windows killed a lot of the outside noise, and brought what noise there was into sharp relief. Snow plugged the chinks around the windows, and frosted the glass.

Creed was watching the news on the TV in the living room. Outside the world was moving on, shaking off Thanksgiving for the Christmas rush, sweeping up the rubble from a terrorist bombing in Tangiers, comparing a newly-revealed Chinese government superhero team to the Avengers...

Logan balanced the knife on it's point for four seconds, and then caught it as it started to fall, and set it down flat again. It made him think of the bar in the Yukon where he hadn't fought Sabretooth after Silverfox's death. The fake one.

He spun the knife again, and let it circle until it stopped, pointing right at him. Logan touched the tip of the blade with one finger, and turned the knife until it pointed at the back of Creed's head. Creed heard the faint 'pik' of Logan's finger leaving the knife point, and knew exactly what direction it was pointing, but didn't turn around.

* * *

Kyle woke up with the sun. His room was mostly empty except for the bed and some shelves. The wooden floor caught the sunlight like brass. For a moment, just a moment, he wondered why Alpha Flight had moved again. Then he remembered, and listened carefully. Only one person was in the house besides him, and they sounded far away. The basement armory Logan had mentioned? Kyle got up and looked out the window, hands flat against the glass. The house was in a fold of mountainside that cut off the view of the town below, and all he could see was last night's tire tracks, and long, dotted lines of footprints, both predators and prey.

/Prey. Food. Now./ Kyle put on his jeans from the day before, and opened the window. It was chilly out. Kyle held onto the window frame with his claws, and closed the window behind him with his foot.

Then he leapt down into the snow, waded out of the crater he'd just made, and ran for a long time.

Logan crossed Kyle's trail three miles up from the house, and followed it. Kyle ran on the balls of his feet, and most people would have mistaken his footprints for animal tracks until he slowed down. It was difficult to sneak up on Kyle in the snow on a quiet day, but Logan was just that good. He caught up to Kyle in time to watch him kill a ptarmigan. The bird had been pecking at a branch sticking up out of the snow, oblivious. It's white winter feathers almost hid it from view, but did nothing to conceal it's scent. Kyle moved slowly, keeping his head down and his shoulders low. He climbed a nearby cedar tree, keeping to the side of the trunk opposite the bird, and peered around. Then he sprang, and knowing that birds take off in the direction they're facing if startled, Kyle aimed a slash of his claws where the bird -would- be. He nailed it, and rolled with his prey in both hands, biting the bird on the head a few times to kill it.

Kyle hunted like a cat.

A barefoot athlete in torn blue jeans, lying on his back in the snow, ragged blonde rock-n-roll mane tangled from the run, eyes happily closed, both hands cupping a dead bird against his collarbone, and a few white feathers sticking to the blood on his lips.

/Kyle ain't Human/ Logan reflected, /-but what he is, ain't bad./

* * *

/Tracks/ thought Kyle, /Logan came by here some time last night. I wonder if.../ Kyle looked around, and spotted another set of foot prints two hundred yards down the mountain. These were fresher. Kyle caught up with Logan a mile and a half later. Wolverine smelled like deer, and wolves.

"Hi," said Kyle, slowing down to walk next to him.

Logan looked over, silent but not hostile.

"-Wolves?" Kyle asked, nose twitching a little.

"Yeah," Logan wasn't sure how to explain that, but he had the feeling he wouldn't have to.

"You- -do that a lot?" Kyle asked.

Logan shrugged.

"Could I meet them?" Kyle asked, before he could think better of it.

"Why?" Logan looked at him hard. It wasn't that Kyle would want to meet the wolves, that he'd expected, it was the way Kyle had asked.

"I have a dream about wolves."

They stopped on a ridge, just within sight of the city far below.

"Go on."

"Sometimes I dream of running with them when they hunt, but I'm still me, just... with them. And sometimes I dream that I'm ...a wolf cub, I guess. One of the wolves licks me, and it smells like you, but I can't open my eyes, and then I wake up," Kyle explained.

Logan took a knee, and watched trucks moving like ants along highway one.

/What do ya want from me?/ he didn't quite snap. /It's too late fer me ta claim you like ya want. I didn't keep ya back then, an' I can't bend time.../

/"What the HELL d'ya want from me?"/ Logan thought, angrily.

"Ah-! It wasn't real, ya know?..." Kyle amended, hurt but trying to cover for it.

"-I just said that out loud, didn' I?" Logan sighed.

"Um..."

"Look," Logan interrupted, wearily. "The worst real wolves'll do is just eat you. But it don't sound ta me like you're lookin' for real wolves, are ya?"

"...Were you the wolf?" Kyle asked him, bluntly.

"I don't remember it."

"I was thinking it could have been right after we escaped from the lab. You did say you were feral then so-" Kyle began, undiscouraged.

"Look kid, you can't just pencil me in," Logan snapped, "-you start doin' that, ya might as well make it up as you go along, get me?"

"Yeah... I get it," Kyle watched the traffic on the road with Logan a minute longer, and then walked away.

* * *

Sabretooth knew as soon as he opened the door. He could smell it. Spent adrenaline, cold-dried sweat. Logan's keys were on the bar, all the way at the end and stopped against a coffee can as if they'd slid there. The washer started up, and Kyle came in from the garage.

"Oh, hey..." Kyle stopped to get a carton of milk out of the fridge, and looked for a cup.

"What are you doin'?" Creed asked.

"Um... getting a drink?" Kyle stopped, cup in hand.

"You gonna finish it?"

"Yeah...?"

"Then put that away," Creed pointed to the cup. Kyle did this, and drank from the carton instead. Sabretooth watched him.

"Come with me," he decided, after a moment. Kyle followed Creed out into the driveway, carton in hand.

"Now what?" Kyle asked, ready for whatever scam Creed was about to pull.

"Now we're gonna look at the sun," Creed announced.

Kyle looked over at his father quizzically, then closed his inner eyelids, and looked up.

Sabretooth put a hand on his shoulder.

"No. Open yer eyes all the way. It ain't gonna kill ya."

Kyle looked. The light was painful for a moment, and then his eyes adjusted, the black dot of the iris narrowing to a pencil-point inside of the blue center. There was a dark spot in the center of Kyle's vision, but if he looked away from the sun for more than a few seconds, it started to fade back to normal like the after-image of a strobe.

"Whaddya think?" Creed asked, after a while.

"This is kinda boring."

"Good," Creed nodded approvingly.

"What was that all about?"

"A Human stares at the sun that long, his eyes are fried forever. Think about it."

Without waiting for a response, Creed walked back inside, and put in 'Ocean's Eleven'.

Kyle joined him. He'd seen the new version with George Cloony, but this was the Frank Sinatra old school. Kyle found himself noticing bright objects in the movie, glints off of jewelry, the reflection in the polished rims of roulette wheels, the bright white of a formal jacket.

He'd never seen the way light left tracks.

* * *

Logan was tired. At three in the morning, he'd been through all the sources he could find on the internet about Hydra, but so far the only lead that had panned out was the distribution network of the industrial cleaning bleach he'd used on the last mission. It was a relatively small company, with most of it's sales centered around Southern Canada, and selected customers in the US. Again, the pattern lead to Ottawa.

A bleach company.

ME Utah.

Barrington.

Logan cracked his neck, and leaned back in the chair, eyes shut. /No way is this gonna work.../ Logan did an ordinary search-engine search for 'ME Utah'.

Most of the sites that came back were Utah tourism, but one caught his eye. MesoWest Data. It turned out to be a weather site connected to the university of Utah. The ME stood for meteorology. It was a NOAA site.

Meteorologists had access to all kinds of satellite photos, didn't they?

Maybe the Weapon X project had piggybacked it's communications onto NOAA in the same way that the operational side had attached itself to the government's pest control division.

Or maybe they had operated out of the university of Utah's meteorology department at some point. Technology had to come from somewhere, and a school was always a good place to start looking for talent.

"Utah, huh?"

Logan shut down the computer, and called it a night.

* * *

None of the lights were on upstairs. Logan got halfway to the living room and noticed that he wasn't alone. Creed was sitting on the couch in the dark, seeing how long it would take for him to notice.

/...Hell./

Creed flipped on a lamp, and turned it so that it faced Logan like an interrogation light.

"Freeze."

"Get that outta my face," Wolverine growled.

/He's squinting instead o' just using the inner set/ Creed noted, /-he's actually trained himself ta blink like a Human./

"Wha'd you say ta Kyle?" Creed asked, making a mental note.

"WHY?"

"'Cause I asked him who the Monty Python bunny reminded 'im of, an' he didn't laugh."

"...I told him 'no'," Logan replied, after a pause.

Creed put the lamp down.

"Wha'd he ask for?"

"The past, I think," Logan said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He took a seat on the edge of the fireplace across from Sabretooth, and continued. "-He's got this story about a wolf that smells like me licking his face when he was little. Got all dreamy-eyed about it. I want Kyle to have a past that don't hurt too, but I'm NOT gonna make it up."

"You sure 'at wasn't you?"

"...No," Logan admitted "-but damned if I can remember."

"Well then," Creed reasoned, "-I guess ya just have t'take his word for it."

"I can't."

"Sucks ta be you," Sabretooth observed, dryly.

* * *

"-But he wasn't too trustful o' toothpaste after that," Wolverine finished, reaching into the snow beside him for another beer. It was a clear night, and from where they sat on the roof, the stars seemed less like points of light than a glowing silver net across the sky. Logan opened the bottle deftly, and held it up. Creed clinked his bottle against Logan's new one, then finished his.

Kyle leaned back on his elbows in the snow, and watched his father somehow peg the dumpster across the yard with the bottle. His head was swimming a little from the booze- -they had been at this for a while- -but Kyle wouldn't have missed it for the world.

/Well... Maybe for the world. Damned superhero's perspective./

Hearing about WW2 and running Canadian whiskey across Lake Superior in the twenties like it happened yesterday didn't seem real. Than again, some of the roadies he'd traveled with didn't even remember the end of the cold war, and he remembered that fine. Heather had called everyone over to the TV to watch the Berlin wall come down. Sasquatch and Puck had broken out the beer in celebration, and Aurora was pouting because her hair was wet from the shower, and Heather wouldn't let her go and blow-dry it. Kyle hadn't known then why the wall coming down was a big deal... but he did remember.

"How'd all this start?" Kyle asked, interrupting Creed's explanation of why Sigourney Weaver in 'Aliens' was the sexiest actress of all time.

"This?" Logan echoed, questioningly.

"Um. How'd you meet?"

"I got this one," Creed cut in quickly, with an untrustworthy grin, "-it was a bar up in the Yukon. Well, a whorehouse with a bar downstairs. -You know..."

-

It was three in the afternoon, and the saloon was dead. Creed shook off his coat in the entryway, and joined some poker players at a big round table near the back. They didn't want a stranger joining the game, and the cards disappeared. They weren't above talking though, and as the afternoon wore on into evening and the place filled up, Creed forgave them. That many suckers in one room was a beautiful sight all on it's own. Choosing carefully, Creed started forming a party to travel up the Klondike and work a goldmine he'd found. Of course, they'd need equipment for a trip like that, but Creed knew where to get it, if they were willing to put together their share of the money.

Someone tapped Creed's shoulder meaningfully, and he looked up to see who. Another taker, perhaps?

"Get out."

The kid couldn't have been more than fourteen. His dark messy hair was held in check by a blue woolen cap, and under that, his honey-brown eyes were as intense as any hawk's. Couldn't be too bright, though.

"Get lost, runt," Creed instructed reasonably, turning back to his conversation.

"Hey, I said-" The boy began.

"I heard ya talkin'. Make sure it don't happen again."

"Look, I'm not kiddin'. The boss says you gotta go," the kid insisted, "-he knows what you are."

"And what tha HELL would that be?" Creed demanded, angrily.

"You know."

"Oh really? An' just what wild hair makes ya think you can move me?" Creed sneered.

"This."

The kid punched him. It was so unexpected, not to mention downright suicidal on the kid's part, that the hit actually caught Creed off-guard. He moved his jaw around a little, and stood up, chair scraping back behind him.

The kid's eyes widened. That had been a very hard punch.

"Alright, boy. Let's dance," Creed pushed up his shirtsleeves, and advanced. It was a first-rate ass-whuppin', but the boy was game, and the fight spilled out onto the slushy dirt street in front of the saloon. He fought like a wild thing, this one. He bit, and snarled, and twisted out of every hold Creed got on him. In the end though, he was beaten nearly senseless, and Creed held him up by his throat, triumphant. Backlit by the blue-white arctic sun, Creed almost missed it. A cut over the boy's eyebrow, smudged by the muddy water dripping down out of his hair, was disappearing.

The kid was-?

And then somebody unloaded a chamber of lead buckshot into the left side of Creed's head, and everything went black.

When he came 'to at the edge of town, Creed's first thought was that there was something tugging on his arm.

No.

Not tugging. Tearing. Like... eatin' off him.

The cold had deadened the nerves until now, but as he began to heal in earnest, the pain returned with his warmth. And Creed knew who was there. He would never forget that scent now. Creed's eyes snapped open, and he and the kid stared at each other, perfectly still. The kid's dark, glossy hair was dry and free of mud now, though his face was still dirty, and fresh red patches of blood decorated his mouth and covered his hands like Indian paint where they gripped Creed's half-eaten forearm.

A pink strip of meat hung from the corner of the kid's mouth, forgotten. Creed grabbed the boy by the throat with his good arm, claws sinking into the soft skin like the spikes of a choke-collar, and dragged him down until they were nose to nose.

"YER MINE..." he hissed into the cold night, eyes never leaving the kid's.

-

"That," Wolverine declared, lobbing a bottle towards the dumpster, "-was COMPLETE horseshit." The bottle missed, barely, and augured into the snowdrift next to the dumpster instead.

"Like you even remember," Creed snorted, "-nice shootin' tex."

"Shaddap. Fer a start, you were a con artist all right, but that wasn't th' con ya were runnin'..." Wolverine began. /-DO I remember this?.../

-

"Hey boy, I got a job for ya," Mr. Schaffer said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. The portly, mustached innkeeper was clearly in a foul mood, gray bowler hat crammed down tight around his ears. Wolverine stuck his scrub brush back in the bucket, stood up, and wiped his hands off on the thighs of his woolen trousers.

"What job?"

"There's a preacher makin' trouble in the bar. I haven't sold two shots since he came in, an' he wants a 'neighborly donation' ta shove off. Git that bandit outta my place, an' there's a half-dollar in gold dust in it for ya."

"A preacher?" Creed interrupted with a snicker, elbowing Logan.

"And a damn loud one," Logan insisted.

"Is this a fantasy o' yours?" Creed countered. Logan gave him a dirty look.

Kyle noticed that the stars bent into a tight arc when they reflected in a brown glass bottle. Kyle closed one eye, and looked at the reflection again. It looked like a pocket universe.

Logan and Creed's stories jived pretty well from then on until the fight spilled out onto the street. With all hope of working his scam destroyed, and facing a pair of loaded shotguns, the 'reverend' Creed had backed off, laughing.

-

"What about him getting shot?" Kyle asked, "-didn't that happen?"

"Not right then," Logan shook his head, "-that came later."

"When?" asked Kyle.

"Go on," Creed said, taking a pull on his beer, "-tell 'im about tha lady in red."

/The lady in Red?/ thought Logan, /-the lady-

-in-

-red.

Her hair shone like hot iron in the light of the oil lamp on the table. The cabin was small, but the walls were sound, and it was so warm...

"D'you live here alone?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'd, uh... I better be going then."

"Whatever for?" She asked, turning towards him. She was breathtaking. Graceful sweep of neck and shoulder, long eyelashes over deep green eyes, and skin that looked too soft to be real. Cherry red lips, the same color as the ribbon that laced up the bodice of her dress. Perfect, round-

"I don't want people talkin'. Sayin' it ain't proper. With you bein' a lady, an' all..." he explained, looking down quickly.

"It's all right, darlin'. They can say what they like. I feel safer with you here."

"Y-ya do?"

"Absolutely," she smiled, and the world changed.

"Well... that feller might come back," he agreed, guiltily.

"That's right. What's your name, honey?" she asked.

His throat got tight, and he couldn't think. He'd HAD a name, but-

"-Mine's Miss Scarlet," she encouraged him.

She was so beautiful. The way she looked at him, and the way she laughed...

It had to be a dream./

"Logan?-" Creed began, carefully.

/"Logan!..." the announcer called out over the crowd. The knife spun in the center of a small square table. Creed ignored the knife, pinning Wolverine's eyes with his own. He was stripped to the waist, hands and forearms wrapped in layers of scrap leather, like fighting gloves. A scent of blood and sweat hung above the bar smells in the air, and in a pool of yellow coal-oil lamp light off to one side the cage waited, thick stained wooden posts grooved deeply by the steel wire strung between them. A hand came down over the knife, and it stopped spinning./

"Nah, that's enough fer one night," Logan decided.

* * *

Sabretooth woke up to a slight movement in the air above his throat. His hand lashed out and grabbed Wolverine's wrist, hard. The wooden-handled steak knife stopped an inch and a half shy of it's target.

"Ta what do I owe the honor?" Sabretooth asked, perfectly calm.

"You forgot," Logan accused, flatly.

"No I didn't. Happy birthday, runt."

"What do I win?"

"The knife. -Remind you of anything?"

Logan popped the bone claws on his right hand, and looked down at Creed dubiously.

"As a matter o' fact it does."

"Anything else?" Creed laughed.

"A bar. A cage match. Somethin' like spin-the-bottle, only played with a blade."

"That was the day you won your name."

"Which one?"

"Ah, now that would be tellin'..." Creed grinned.

* * *

/ME Utah. Barrington. Providence. Prophesy.

Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, (Hudson?)

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--

Logan. Hines. Andre.

Dearborn.

Rochester. Buffalo.

Salem. Westchester. Graymalkin.

Davidson.

Ottawa. Windsor-/

Wolverine snapped awake, and stared at the ceiling for a second or two.

Windsor. The fake-memory-set warehouse had been in Windsor. Right across the Canadian-US border from Detroit. And Detroit was right next to... #!)&#... DEARBORN.

Logan got up, and padded downstairs to find a map.

/Yeah. Right there.../ He circled Windsor and Dearborn together in red felt-tip pen. And then he stopped, staring at the bottom edge of the circle he'd drawn in shock.

Through the red ink, the name of a town twenty kilometers Southeast of Windsor was still clearly readable. Logan's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"ESSEX?!"

-

* * *

Author's note: ...And unfortunately that's as far as I got with that. I just do not know how to wrap this up, though I've written the beginnings of at least two versions of the next chapter. Someday it WILL occur to me how to end this the right way, but until then I'm leaving it alone.

-

The 'con-artist', 'preacher', and 'lady in red' back-stories are mine (aside from the characters, of course), as is 'ME Utah'.

The idea of Logan experimenting with cannibalism as a child was from 'Wolverine #25 :Heir Aid', in which Logan tells an indirect origin story. When the kid he's telling it to asks what 'carrion' is, Logan replies, "Nothing. Forget I said that."

The lab Team X raided in 'The Hunters' is canon (though I've played fast and loose with the layout), and was originally discovered by by Hawkeye of the Avengers.

"Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--" is from 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats', by T.S. Elliot.

Dr. Moira MacTaggart, Proteus, Joe MacTaggart, Excalibur, The Evil Empire, A.I.M. Mechanics, the 'Satan's Circus' bar, The incident with Mystique at theEiffel tower, Bloody Mary/Typhoid Mary, Blob, and many of the other story details are canon. If you ask, I'll tell you where I got 'em.

If you REALLY want to know what Logan's connection to Walden pond is, read the chapter called 'visitors' in the book 'Walden', by Henry David Thoreau.

The Windsor-Dearborn-Essex triangulation WORKS.

-


End file.
